Armed with Science | Tag Archive | advanced learning technology series

How Air Force is Designing Classroom Instruction for the Future

Filed under Education & Culture, Technology by John Ohab on September 24, 2010 at 10:42 am {no comments}

Carol Wall is a project manager in AETC's Future Learning Division. (Photo: US Air Force)

Carol Wall is a project manager in the Future Learning Division at the Air Education and Training Command (AETC). She has worked for AETC for 14 years.

It will come as no surprise that the Air Force has a systematic approach for just about everything, including how our instruction is developed!

Our formal process is called Instructional System Development, or ISD, and it applies to all personnel who plan, design, develop, implement, approve, administer, conduct, evaluate, or manage Air Force instruction. The goal of Air Force ISD is to ensure our personnel are trained to do their job in the most cost efficient and effective way possible.

In many ways, our education and training have remained unchanged for quite some time. The ISD process has served us well and will continue to be a solid basis for our course development efforts. The one area in which we will need to make some updates or to at least think differently is in our design, and that design will rely heavily on good analysis.

We are experimenting with presenting instruction in virtual worlds and using mobile applications for ancillary course delivery and also for mobile referencing. In this departure from traditional classroom instruction, we will need to carefully consider the context of our instruction. Since a virtual or mobile learning environment can be just about anything, the task of designing instruction will be more extensive and complex which will make designing instruction more time consuming than traditional classroom instruction.

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How will Air Force Manage Knowledge in the Future?

Filed under Education & Culture, Policy, Technology by Armed with Science on September 10, 2010 at 2:10 pm {no comments}

A learner centric learning system consisting of knowledge management, continuous learning, and precision learning. (Image: Air Force)

A learner centric learning system (Image: Air Force)

Col. John Thompson is the Future Learning Advisor to the Air Education and Training Command (AETC) Director of Plans, Programs, Requirements, and Assessments. He is responsible for facilitating innovation across AETC’s recruiting, training and education mission.

Starting in the third grade, my daughters were taught to manage knowledge via web searches.

Knowledge management skills are critical in today’s work environment. The Air Force has multiple systems such as Air Force Knowledge Now, the Air Force Portal, and internal organization software and hardware systems that manage our knowledge.

How can we make those systems more efficient with the goal being to get the right “nugget” of knowledge to the end user as quickly as possible? Imagine if we had a high powered search engine that had a rating system similar to some major online sales companies so with a simple search you would have access to a filtered, prioritized, categorized listing of knowledge.

We have a similar information overload in learning management systems. My command, AETC, alone has at least 17 formal learning management systems.

To get to our “simple” goal, we first need the systems to talk to one another through service-oriented architecture (a way of designing systems composed of services that are invoked in a standard way). Then, we could have a program called the “Air Force Learning Environment” to collect the data and provide a single training jacket showing all the training and education an Airman has completed. The training jacket would be a single source document where you could tell if you are ready to deploy, what schools you are qualified for, and what ancillary training is due. Finally, we need to write policy that prohibits the proliferation of learning management systems to start a consolidation.

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Air Force Using Serious Game Technology to Enhance Training

Filed under Education & Culture, Technology by Armed with Science on August 19, 2010 at 12:27 pm {no comments}

Air Staff officials will institutionalize the remotely piloted aircraft pilot career field by establishing undergraduate RPA training. (Image: US Air Force/Nick Medrano)

Air Staff officials will institutionalize the remotely piloted aircraft pilot career field by establishing undergraduate training. (Image: US Air Force/Nick Medrano)

One of my favorite questions for the audience when I’m briefing our future learning program is, “What should be an Air Force game for recruiting?”

The US Army developed America’s Army into a great recruiting and training tool using the latest in video game technology. Often, the answer I get is a fifth generation fighter simulator, but we don’t seem to have troubles recruiting F-22 pilots.

Instead, AETC is developing a Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) simulator. Not many details are releasable beyond the fact it will be based on the Predator/Reaper weapon system.

On the flight simulation side, we continue to look at what would allow us to put more training into the simulator. That might be increasing the realism by putting artificially intelligent air traffic control and traffic in the simulator.

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Three Ways Virtual Reality Can Improve Military Training

Filed under Education & Culture, Technology by John Ohab on July 30, 2010 at 11:23 am {one comment}

AETC collaborates their virtual world work through an active participation in the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds.

Efficiency of flight simulators has improved since they first appeared in the 1930s. My first flight as a commercial airline pilot was with a full passenger load because the fidelity of the flight simulator made the training so realistic that it didn’t require aircraft flight hours.

We now have a similar capability available for a far broader training and education spectrum. We can now use virtual environments to train more efficiently or in environments that are too dangerous to recreate.

The key to this training is a realistic immersion. You need to feel like you are present in the environment. The virtual environment provides the immersion and the scalability is drastically improved. An example of the scalability is a base exercise which is generally limited to a portion of the base. The reason for the limit is due to some portion of the mission needing to continue. However, if a weapon of mass destruction were to be used in a large city it would likely effect large portions of multiple bases (like Joint Base San Antonio). We can use a virtual environment to train such a cataclysmic event. AETC is testing large-scale exercise scenarios in a virtual environment by building the Joint Base San Antonio command post.

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Air Force Exploring Mobile Learning Systems

Filed under Education & Culture, Technology by John Ohab on July 16, 2010 at 1:48 pm {9 comments}

Photo: Shaw Air Force Base

Today, I’m taking a trip to Edwards Air Force Base to watch a friend’s change of command. During the dead time in my travel, I often look for ways to be productive. One of the options that we don’t have is access to training through our mobile devices. Mobile learning is looking to change that by providing small (15 minutes or less) sections of courseware that can be taken anytime/anywhere. So, if you want to take your laws of armed conflict annual training from your lounge chair at home on a Saturday, you will be able to.

When hurricane Katrina hit, the military had challenges with personnel accountability. A lot of the missing personnel had access to their mobile devices which worked until the battery ran out in the device or the cell tower.

Imagine the day when accountability is available over your mobile device. Your mobile device is tracked so we send warnings to those in a certain geographic area. That day is here. The technology is available. What we need is an appropriate business case to invest in the technology.

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The Future of Air Force Learning Technology

Filed under Education & Culture, Technology by John Ohab on July 9, 2010 at 1:14 pm {one comment}

U.S. Air Force Col. John Thompson (Photo: U.S. Air Force)

Gen Stephen Lorenz, the Commander of Air Education and Training Command (AETC), directed the command to adopt innovation as the command’s fourth core competency. With Gen Lorenz’s vision of delivering unrivaled air, space, and cyberspace education and training we have stood up a future learning division which works on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of AETC’s programs.

Innovation has always occurred within AETC. Instructors and students have always found new ways of completing their mission more effectively or efficiently. What they haven’t had until now is access to headquarters’ resources. The command now offers Advanced Learning Technology Demonstrations (ALTDs) where an instructor can submit a great idea, have it resourced and independently tested, and possibly used across AETC.

To manage the variety of ideas that are input as ALTDs, we have organized ourselves around five focus areas:

Instructional Design
Knowledge Systems
Virtual Environments
Mobile Learning
Simulations & Gaming

As we continue to pursue unrivaled education and training, we envision an environment with easy access (knowledge systems), available anytime/anywhere (mobile learning), instruction well designed for the delivery system (instructional design), that is interactive (simulations & gaming), and simulates difficult environments like cultural immersion (virtual environments).

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