Anytime, Anywhere
Written by Patrick E. Clarke
The Army is undergoing a significant change, called Army Force Generation (ARFORGEN). Education will be critical to support that effort. The ARFORGEN concept involves changing the current Army configuration of large, fixed divisions into smaller, more self-contained brigades paired with modular, multi-functional support brigades. General William S. Wallace, commander, Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), has emphasized that the ARFORGEN’s brigadecentric Army calls for a brigade-centric education strategy.
That’s where the Distributed Learning System (DLS) comes in. “DLS is our principal way to provide soldiers [education] anytime, anywhere,” said Colonel James C. Markley, director, Training Development and Delivery Directorate, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Training, TRADOC, Fort Monroe, Va.
“In fact, at this point it’s not entirely clear that soldiers can get all the [education] required in the one-year reset period without DLS.”
Markley is referring to one of the three ARFORGEN force pools that soldiers will be broken into: Reset/Train, Ready and Available. Reset/Train personnel receive education based on staffing requirements, equipment used and funding necessary to progress to the next group, the Ready pool. “By the time soldiers progress to the Available pool, they are trained for deployment in support of regional combat commander requirements,” according to Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bean, DLS product manager.
Bean explained that the DLS program is responsible for building and deploying multiple education systems simultaneously. For security purposes, the Army soldier or civilian needs to be a registered user. Then, using the Army Knowledge portal the distributed learning (DL) can begin.
“Distributed learning is the perfect way to enable soldiers to take the education they need to be successful,” said Bean. In his view, temporary duty (TDY) education is constrained by the cost to the Army and the cost to families.
“With the current ops-tempo, troops are deployed, are getting ready to deploy or are getting back from their deployment.” Distributed learning is a family-friendly way to acquire education. “It’s especially valuable to our Reserve and Guard members, because it not only cuts down on time away from families but reduces time away from civilian jobs,” said Bean.
By centralizing education content, consolidating costs and delivering Webbased courses to all Army personnel, the cost savings have been significant, according to Stan Davis, project officer, Army e-Learning. “An Army Audit Agency report completed in February 2005 determined that the Army saved approximately $86 million in education cost avoidance over three fiscal years by using Army e-Learning,” said Davis.
As the number of personnel taking course increases, so do the savings. Over 312,000 Army personnel have used Army e-Learning since the beginning of fiscal year 2006. In the same time frame, 81,000 personnel made use of military occupational specialty (MOS) courses using the Army Learning Management System, and there were 55,000 foreign language education users.
SkillSoft Corporation, with U.S. headquarters in Nashua, N.H., is the vendor responsible for offering Army members via the Army e-Learning Program over 2,600 Web-based courses related to information technology, business, leadership and professional development, according to Kevin Duffer, SkillSoft vicepresident of public sector and channel markets.
SkillSoft supports more than 70 discreet information technology certifications. The company has also developed 10 courses for the federal government related to mandatory topics such as travel card awareness and information technology. “That’s just one example of SkillSoft responding to customers’ needs,” said Duffer.
Mandatory requirements such as the information security awareness course drive initial usage, “But total value of the content is what brings users back,” said Duffer. “We need to constantly ensure that our content is trusted and available.”
“One of the unique things about SkillSoft is the search technology we’ve embedded into our hosted products,” said Duffer. “So, if you’re looking at a particular topic you get all the resources of SkillSoft and can choose the learning modality that best fits your style.”
SkillSoft also offers a mentoring program that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The mentors are full-time employees certified in the referenced topic.
Users can find a wealth of information on the Internet, but an important issue is relevance. “We are a trusted source” said Duffer Another key issue is ease of use. “As long as you can access the web, you can work on a course at any time,” said Bean. The Army has also fielded digital training facilities (DTFs) worldwide, based on utilization and need. Each DTF offers 12 to 16 student workstations, video tele-education (VTT) equipment and Microsoft Office software.
Seven prototype Deployed Digital Training Campuses (DDTC) have also been fielded.
These facilities are actually assigned to a brigade. “We have two in the Sinai, one in Germany, and two in Kosovo, said Markley. In addition, soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division are currently using a DDTC for the Basic Noncommissioned Officer Course in Iraq, with the instruction delivered from Germany and bridged through the Army Training Support Center at Fort Eustis, Va. For operational security reasons, Markley was not able to provide information on exactly where DDTC with the 101st is located. The 7th DDTC is in the process of being moved to an as yet undetermined location. There has been a focus on ensuring simple set-up and operation of DDTC’s in less than one hour. The facilities consist of computer servers, laptop workstations and local-area network connectivity. In addition, two-way, interactive VTT enables subject matter experts to directly communicate and collaborate with users.
“Eventually, when a brigade deploys, it will be standard procedure for that unit to take a DDTC with them,” said Bean.
The sounds of German, Farsi or Pashto (an Iranian language spoken in Afghanistan and Pakistan) might be heard coming from a DDTC because Rosetta Stone is the other key vendor involved in the DL program. The company, with U.S. headquarters in Harrisonburg, Va., offers 30 languages for DL users to choose from. “Rosetta Stone can give Army soldiers and civilians the basics of a language and help them to be better ambassadors for the U.S.,” said Bean.
“Rosetta Stone is about helping people of any age or ability to learn languages,” said Duane Sider, director of learning for Rosetta Stone. The company offers programs in 30 different languages spoken by over 90 percent of the world’s population. Rosetta Stone has over 5 million users worldwide in more than 150 countries, according to Sider. The users can be from the education, government, military and corporate worlds, in addition to private users.
Sider notes that most Americans believe they are no good at learning languages. “But, we often think we’re bad at languages because of classroom experiences that may have been less than positive,” said Sider. He continued, “In school, the grammar translation method is used, focusing primarily on the written word, not spoken language.
“Our method replicates the process used to learn your first language,” explained Sider. “The best way to learn a second language is the way we learned our first one—through immersion.” In immersion—you never encounter translations in your native language. With Rosetta Stone’s Dynamic Immersion you learn to think in a new language from the very beginning. “In our Spanish program, for example, all you hear and see is Spanish,” said Sider. Then the student directly connects the meaning of the new language to real-life images from the world around him. “Initially, basic nouns are connected with images. Then, the nouns are put into actions. Images, sound and texts are provided by Rosetta Stone, entirely on the computer, and all the student needs to do is interact with the language,” said Sider. The various languages are programmed so that they will be taught just as quickly as the student can learn.
Rosetta Stone’s teaching techniques have certainly worked with 1st Lieutenant Trevor Heller, who is currently stationed in Buedingen, Germany, with the 1st Armored Division. Heller was interested in the German language and culture, and he made an attempt to take a German course through the University of Maryland’s on-post campus. “With my unit’s schedule, I was never able to find time to take a course there,” said Heller. “I never seemed to be around when the classes were offered.”
Instead, when he saw Rosetta Stone featured on the Army Knowledge Online homepage, he decided to give it a try. “I really like that you can go at your own pace,” says Heller. “It’s a must with our current op-tempo. I also like how comprehensive the course is. I’m able to work on all skills—writing, reading and speaking.” Heller also recommends the Rosetta Stone program to his soldiers. “I tell them that it’s good for promotion points, but it’s also good for self-improvement and just getting around over here.”
The various language courses are also available on a CD-ROM that is multimedia, fully interactive and with the same learning content as on the web. “I’m proudest of the fact that Rosetta Stone restores confidence in people’s ability to learn a language,” said Sider. TRADOC has been told to incorporate more officer education online. “That’s in part because one of the challenges of AFFORGEN is how long we can send senior lieutenants and junior captains off to [education],” said Markley.
There are currently 16 captain’s courses, covering all the major officer career fields, from infantry officer education to finance officers. Markley was very impressed with research on Guided Experiential Learning (GEL) that looked at 20 to 30 learning modalities and found that “Students learn quicker and retained more when courses were designed using the principals of GEL.”
The GEL researcher proposed general rules to help an education developer choose the right approaches:
• The material should be job-related.
• Education should activate a student’s prior knowledge.
• The instructor should demonstrate what is being learned before the students try.
• The student needs the opportunity to practice performing the task.
It is important to be aware how well the student transfers the knowledge learned to other area/situations. GEL works equally well in designing classroom or online education.
Research efforts have shown that when you take classroom instruction and turn it into DL courseware, on average it takes 30 percent less time to complete the course, according to Markley. “Also, Saturday is being considered for classes. If we use DL and Saturday classes we can cut a 20-week course down to 14 ½ weeks. We plan to pilot this approach in fiscal year 2007.”
SkillSoft’s Duffer pointed out another reason why officers will need to become more involved in DL. “Today’s officers in every service need more technical acumen than ever. So, technology education perceived as being targeted to technicians is now being used more by officers.”
Since military officers have to do more technology management, they need to stay on top of the latest developments. “An officer might not take a Cisco certification course, but may need to know the purpose of a router in a network-centric warfare environment, which is where Books would come in,” said Duffer.
Duffer is referring to Books 24 x 7—an online repository of reference books by major publishers covering business and IT topics which is being offered to the Army as a pilot program by Skillsoft.
The Army has gone from zero users of Books 24 x 7 when the program was introduced last October to 19,000 users. “Rather than an e-book solution—it’s a performance support solution. In fact, it’s a dynamic performance solution in that it is continually updated as we add books and reference sources,” said Duffer.
SkillSoft continues to upgrade curriculum offerings for their customer base, including the Army. “We are building knowledge learning centers—which are focused learning portals around high interest, topical areas,” said Duffer. “For example, we’ve released one on information security that is very relevant to DoD. A soldier can have streamlined access to key resources specific to information security.”
Markley envisions a day when DL would be used for all non-commissioned officers education that would include both the basic and the advanced education.
He can see DL being used for about half of all education for captains.
There are three critical issues to keep in mind when putting together a distributed learning curriculum:
• Does the education require more senses than that of sight and sound?
• If the task involves complicated environmental conditions such as putting out a fire or handling an urban riot, then the student needs to physically participate in the education, and the education can’t be part of DL.
• If the task is so complex that you have to have an instructor present, as is the case in most medical career fields, the curriculum cannot be turned into DL.
“If the learning doesn’t involve any of those three things, most everything else can be DL,” said Markley. He did acknowledge that it’s a challenge to get a person to believe that responding to those three questions is all that’s needed to determine if a course can be done online or not.
Still, Markley is confident that “The Army is way ahead of academia as far as the tradition that the instructor needs to deliver instructions in front of a classroom.”
He is a leader who welcomes the education essential to change. ♦