The Problem – the ‘Fire Hose’ Approach to Education
As the recent Ryan Review noted, the Australian Army’s current system of Professional Military Education (PME) is not broken, but needs reinvigoration.
There are long stretches between officer promotion courses when immersion into the profession of arms is sporadic and incidental. Professional development can be diminished against urgent collective training requirements and unit administration. The urgent often pushes out the important.
All ranks know the feeling of “drinking from the fire hose” and “data dumping”. The former refers to intensive study, often by rote, committing material to memory just long enough for an assessment. The latter refers to the period that follows, when students inevitably forget most of what was learnt.
During the long stretch of time between courses, we often struggle to recall hazy memories of past studies. If we are destined to forget so much of what we learn during PME, and don’t use it during daily duties, what is the point of learning it in the first place?
Perhaps there is another way. The things we learn during residential courses could be reinforced, even augmented, during the long years in between.
A Solution for the Connected Age: Massive Open Online Courses?
To maximise the Army’s human capital and maintain the cognitive edge over Australia’s rivals, we must develop new ways to enhance PME.
The Director General Training and Doctrine (DG TRADOC) could run a series of online short courses designed to enhance the officer corps’ knowledge and capacity for innovation. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which have grown remarkably since 2008, could serve as a model – offering a flexible, scalable and cheap format. This model would suit Millennials, who (as the Chief of Army said recently) “expect to know more, have access to more, understand more and contribute more.”
MOOCs would suit the Chief of Army’s vision for PME, which he explained in an address to the United Services Institute (USI) of the ACT: “I want it distributed, I want it networked, I want it virtual. I want it working in ways that no matter where our people are, learning is occurring. We need to build this resource online. We need to make it accessible and we need to design it around Army’s professional development priorities.”
Online short courses, using MOOCs as a model, are an obvious way to achieve this. The courses could target four main areas:
- Firstly, maintaining professional education following ab initio training by offering refresher short courses covering material first encountered at Duntroon – mainly warfighting theory, leadership and tactics.
- Secondly, maintaining professional education between promotion courses and preparing for subsequent promotion courses. For example, bridging the gaps between Duntroon, the All Corps Captain’s Course and the Advanced Operations Course.
- Thirdly, disseminating new or substantially changed doctrine across the officer corps. If a new capability is introduced at the battlegroup level, like short-range tactical UAS for example, a short course on the capability’s tactical employment could be part of the roll-out.
- Lastly, reinforcing strategic priorities for Army officer development, as set out in the Chief of Army’s professional development priorities. For example, the Chief of Army (in his address to the USI) noted that Army officers suffer from jargon-laden writing, and this impedes our ability to think and communicate clearly. Short courses on professional writing could be offered targeting this.
Short courses would promote more intellectual engagement and professional discourse among junior officers, establishing the habits required throughout a military career. They would provide a common basis for professional development across the junior officer corps, offering senior Army leadership an opportunity to shape the development of junior officers, address shortfalls and ensure changes in doctrine permeate the Army.
Making this a Reality – First Steps and Obvious Problems
The first step for creating a system of PME short courses could be a committee for PME revitalisation chaired by the new Director PME within TRADOC, comprising a representative sample of ranks and corps. A stakeholder consultation period would then gauge interest and identify topics. These processes would occur alongside the creation of a one-stop-shop online resource for self-study and unit PME and an Army Officer and Enlisted Professional Development Framework, currently underway following the Chief of Army Directive Implementation of the Ryan Review.
We could then trial short courses using MOOCs or a similar model throughout 2017, before launching an initial set of short courses by 2018.
Introducing short courses involves many issues for resolution, including how junior officers would find extra time, what incentives would encourage participation and who would host and staff the courses. These problems would need to be worked through, with possible changes needed in unit routines, battle rhythms and officer mentoring. A change in culture would be required, but it might be worth it.
Conclusion and What I Need from You?
The human element predominates in land warfare and human capital is the Army’s most important asset. To maximise this asset and maintain the cognitive edge over Australia’s rivals, the Army must enhance its capacity to think, both individually and collectively.
While the current system of PME is not broken, the gaps between courses need to be smoothed out. A system of elective online short courses provides a flexible, scalable and cheap way to achieve this.
I need your help confirming whether this is a good idea, and if it’s worth pitching to the Chief of Army and the rest of the DEF Board. I’m looking to answer the following questions:
- Question 1. What topics could elective online short courses target?
- Question 2. What incentives could be offered to encourage participation in short courses?
- Question 3. What would be the best method of delivery? Who would staff and organise the courses?
If you have a view, just comment on this article, or via social media. I’ll then get back to you; either openly online or via a private message. Thanks for your support – I look forward to hearing your views.
About the author
John Shipp is a junior officer in the 7th Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment.
Disclaimer
Grounded Curiosity is a platform to spark debate, focused on junior commanders. The views expressed do not reflect any official position or that of any of the author’s employers – see more here.
24 thoughts on “Idea Pitch – Online Short Courses for Professional Military Education”
John, I love your idea and have an example of a model that you might want to consider. It’s called Future learn and you can access it via the following link:
https://www.futurelearn.com
They already partner with UNSW Canberra campus for some courses and some of the lecturers may be familiar (such as Dr John Connor).
I hope this assists.
Thanks for your feedback David. I’ve been doing FutureLearn’s UNSW Canberra MOOC on Military Ethics (partly out of interest and partly to research this proposal): https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/military-ethics/. Been impressed so far. An advantage of using existing MOOC providers (and UNSW’s existing relationship with FutureLearn) to implement this proposal would be reducing the resource burden on Army. A potential drawback is that it wouldn’t be exclusively military themed, and further, it couldn’t host security classified material. Still, there’s a lot of potential there, and using MOOC providers could be just one piece of the puzzle. Any thoughts?
Hey John, good article. A couple of points for topics; breaking RMCs Syllabus into short courses available online would be a great way to improve the exposure that A-Res and SSO personnel get to tactical war fighting theory. Another area of topics I believe would be useful is the areas that people have to deal with on an everyday basis that are done sub optimally but have big impacts on unit performance (contract management, risk management, requirements practise, etc). Some other questions that may help are, how is it funded? Would the competencies be nationally recognised (this will help incentivise participation but may result in a less explicitly military focus)? Hopefully this has helped in some way. Best of luck with it.
Thanks Chris, I hadn’t thought of the potential for ARes and SSO training, that is a very good point.
Funding, and the related issue of manning, is definitely a major consideration for this proposal. It’s something I’m putting thought into. It all depends what model is used. I’m told the UNSW Canberra MOOC on Military Ethics only requires a single staff member to run. Leveraging existing MOOC providers would be the lowest cost option, at the expense of losing control over the content and having to deliver only unclassified material. It’s a matter of trade-offs. Any thoughts on how these competing imperatives could be balanced or overcome?
I enrolled into a Military Ethics MOOC through future learn. The content was very good and discussion amongst the course was well administered. The quality of videos was high and the sequence was great. 7 weeks at 3 hours per week I found achievable. The UNSW facilitated the course with references from many militaries.
The range of courses and durations vary greatly and if you run behind due to competing priorities you can just re-enrol, free and flexible learning for all.
Thanks Derek, I’ve been doing the same course for interest and researching this proposal. You’re right – it is an exemplar of what can be achieved with MOOCs, leveraging existing providers and education institutions.
These are just like a try before you buy. They awaken the mind and we remember how to read, write and discuss. They create a level of curiosity which drives you look further and in so many different directions.
Great stuff Derek. I am really pleased to see self-directed PME being undertaken by team members across the Warrant Officer and Non Commissioned Officer Academy. Keep up the good work. You are leading the way in this, and setting the path for others to follow. 9
John, great idea. I have thought about something similar but at target rank WO2 and MAJ. I have an interest in this area and may be able to provide you some assistance. There are lots of people working different angles so it would be good to collaborate. Call me next week.
Thanks Ben, will do.
Sir, fantastic idea.
As a reservist officer cadet at the pointy end of the FAC, I wish we had something like this in place.
Of late, ADELE (https://www.adele.edu.au) is being utilised more and more for NRT type training.
For me personally, the ‘fire hose’ approach would be one of my main concerns throughout the continuum. I am a mature aged, non-degree qualified OCDT and I struggle to keep up with the rate that content is delivered, let alone retain it. It’s not that I don’t understand it, it just that there isn’t enough time to absorb it which then has a negative impact on my ability to apply the theory out field. I would love to be able to sit down in my own time and go through content again to help reinforce what was delivered.
Coupled with your suggestion, it would be great if there were a consistent set of lessons that could be delivered via this mechanism by all University Regiments. When we come together during training blocks, the inconsistency of knowledge is evident and it would be great if we were all at a similar level prior to going on TBs.
Thanks Terry, you raise some excellent points about how this concept could be integrated with ARes training continuums. I will keep this in mind.
Question 1: What topics could elective online short courses target?
Elective online courses could effectively target:
1) Tactics taught at RMC, including basic infantry and all corps concepts – and a slightly more in depth view of tactics. This would include pro’s and cons of adapting specific tactics in certain situations and some examples of war-gaming for the battlefield. Focus should be given for modifying tactics to a range of different intensity battlefields – fighting a war, not the war (For example, a peace keeping operation versus a theoretical Australian presence in the Ukraine), with related historical examples, and further source material. This could also be tailored to Corps specific learning packages linking lessons learned from Duntroon to required knowledge for ACCC.
2) Greater depth in the tactics of mounted combat, especially given the broadening use of vehicles and convoys amongst the wider army, and the gaining of an element of protected mobility under the Land 121 project for logistics elements. It would help to know how to best exploit mounted mobility firepower and manoeuvre especially as logistic commanders – whilst Armoured Corps ROBC no doubt covers off on it extremely well, logistics commanders would certainly benefit from a greater level of tactical knowledge of mounted combat.
3) Inter-corps interactions both in a tactical and logistical setting, and a robust discussion on how each corps can best achieve interoperability together – smooth out different expectations of what is achievable, and increase perspective amongst junior commanders of the wider impacts their actions will likely have on the battlefield.
4) An analysis of past major exercises, particularly large ones like RimPac and Hamel/Talisman Sabre – focussed on lessons learned from individual corps, a day by day recap of all the encounters and problems faced from the OT’s which would give a broader understanding of how the exercise was actually played out. The information on the conduct of the ‘battle’ was not exactly propagated down to some junior commanders – this adversely impacts the learning derived from such an activity at the junior level, and impinges on the ability of junior commanders to display initiative in the performance of their tasks, reference Ender’s Game – a commander who is succeeding but doesn’t know why will have difficulty translating that success into different situations, much as one who is failing without understanding is unlikely to achieve success. Greater levels of information about the scenario and how it played out at a headquarters level, plus considerations that BDE COMD’s etc took in making decisions would allow junior commanders to learn more directly from the exercise and understand the roles of higher headquarters in greater detail, and expose them to more experienced officers and the decision making processes of S-Map etc earlier.
5) Exercises like RimPac being analysed would broaden the understanding of the greater army of current doctrine and experiences on amphibious operations, interoperability with navy, challenges and methods of overcoming issues faced during life at sea, experiences of operating with standard alliance partners and best methods for integrating command structures and forces/assets in a combined arms manner. Given the increased likelihood of all parts of Army experiencing, at some point, amphibious operations, this would greatly assist junior commanders in not falling into the pitfalls others before may have experienced.
6) This would be able to be developed relatively easily over time, with the AAR points from these exercises at every level being incorporated into a body of existing lessons learned – although the ideal layout to my mind would be a summary of lessons learned, perhaps with a supporting paragraph of detail, with links to the incidents they are referenced to IOT gain greater understanding of the relevance of the lessons. Doctrine represents the current body of knowledge/procedures that work/have worked, but doesn’t often reference the incidents that gave rise to the learning – more often simply giving a ‘this is how it is done’ rather than ‘it should be done this way, due to X and Y, because when done a different way, Z occurs.”
Question 2: What incentives could be offered to encourage participation?
Incentives to encourage participation could include:
1) Reflection of time spent on professional development being assessed as a category in officer PAR’s. This incentive allows those who wish to focus both in and out of hours on mastery of the profession of arms to be recognised in a professional formalised manner for their efforts, and raises the official recognition of the necessity of a dedication to continued professional development.
2) Location based forums at a base/city level run potentially once every month/two months for officers interested/able to attend to meet and discuss professional topics, network in area and discuss localised TTP’s amongst units they will likely operate with.
3) Recognised RPL, as discussed in relevant Facebook comments, would be a high incentive for people pursuing Masters and other higher levels of study in Defence related topics.
4) Allocated time per week/fortnight solely dedicated Army wide for officers to conduct an hour or two of professional development in location, with teaching materials provided in a centralised location for discussion amongst individual CoC in a developmental setting, allowing different officers to lead the professional discussions each week. The centralised topics would also allow dislocated commands/commanders to interact with their peers on the issues based on the same source material.
Question 3: What would be the best method of delivery? Who would staff and organise the course?
The best method of delivery would be:
1) An online, weekly/fortnightly updated learning site on the Army website on DRN, which would allow easy access to information for interested parties. Would best be backed up by forums on topics raised on each of the short courses to allow for discussion of the course contents by students from the course as well as contributors of course content. Would ideally have notifications of new comments/replies in bookmarked forums or ones in which you have contributed so you are able to track certain discussion threads easily – potentially by having a log on or profile specific to that location of the site, or perhaps automated Lync notifications. Some further thought likely needs to be put into this space – it is likely best supported, in my opinion, by dedicated periods of time for professional development which would likely implement a greater buy-in to the activity rather than people paying it off due to already busy schedules.
2) The online information for the courses would be best supported by location based bi-monthly forums at which officers in location with the time and inclination meet to discuss the topics put forth in the intervening weeks, potentially held at the local officers mess. This could also lead to a greater culture of discussion of professional development and greater networking opportunities, especially in the realms of professional education about inter-corps operations.
The people to staff, organise and contribute to the course could be:
1) The education corps would be the natural people to co-ordinate the courses and conduct the staff work in setting up and running the courses, with pers from within the corps acting to contribute materiel from their relevant corps knowledge for the courses – e.g. cavalry for convoy protection, aviation for concepts of aviation support and requirements, logistics officers for managing a supply system, transport corps for logistics convoy consideration etc. The analysis of major exercises could be done by the relevant HQ’s and Intel Corps, supporting Army’s future learning by correctly identifying our strengths and weakness and developing a better internal understanding of our centres of gravity.
2) The opportunity to organise these events or present at them would also be a matter of professional development for junior officers IAW the above recommendation that professional development be included in an officer’s PAR. The overall learning outcomes from the forums and articles would be able to be distilled into condensed lessons learned publications by the education corps, giving them a good insight into the overall levels of professional education across the Army and allowing them to monitor and identify to higher headquarters potentials for targeted learning to address shortfalls for ForComd directed professional development focuses.
3) Weaknesses of this proposed system are that: it would rely heavily on contributing SME’s for accurate and up to date doctrine and TTP’s, would take a reasonable amount of time from unit working time per fortnight on the part of all officers in general, and would need to be effectively managed to keep discussions and publications on topic, as opposed to generating more reams of reading faster than people can process. Initially it would potentially have a slower start to begin the process, but once contributions are steady, and professional development is more recognised in Army as an essential part of an officer’s career, (potentially starting integration into this style of learning in RMC) it would likely become an extremely valuable tool for the development of a learning culture far more ready to assimilate lessons learned from past and present conflicts.
Thanks Sam, you’ve raised a lot of ideas for what can be done, both with my proposal, and with PME revitalisation more broadly. I am conscious that my proposal can’t achieve everything, and by making it try to do too much, there’s a danger that it doesn’t do anything well, particularly when staffing and resource allocation become a factor. However, I’ll take your ideas on board for the final pitch.
Your suggestions for incentives are novel and worthwhile, particularly the idea of roadshows/forums. This would enhance the third line of effort, giving our people face-time and hands-on experience with new capabilities and lessons learned.
John, great innovation and you are on an excellent path here. We need to to also address the incentive and time for our soldiers and officers to undertake PME outside of , unless Units make a deliberate effort to make PME part of their weekly program. A question I would continually pose during CTC AARs with CTs, BGs and CBs is who is the chief instructor within your unit / brigade ? Often there would be silence and confusion the answer should be clearly understood as all leaders have training responsibility, a PME package could aim to arm our leaders with well developed training packages. You are absolutely right in focus of ensuring our soldiers and officers are exposed PME continually beyond the isolated periods of residential courses. We must reinforce the role and responsibility all leaders in Army have as the primary delivers of training.
Thanks for your support Sir. As you say, mentoring is essential for PME and an important guide to self-study. The questions of time and incentives, which are probably linked, are going to be important challenges to be addressed if this proposal is to be successful.
John, great idea and great post.
First some observations:
“The urgent often pushes out the important.”
Excellent point. How do we change that? Maybe we place the same importance on exercising the mind as we do the body? The same way that COs may dictate that everyone will do a minimum of 3 PT sessions a week, we do the same for professional education. If some admin tasks do not get completed…then so be it.
From the Soldier and the State:
“The intellectual content of the military profession requires the modern officer to devote about one-third of his professional life to formal schooling, probably a higher ratio of educational time to practice than in any other profession.”
Professional education is both urgent and important, and should take priority over low importance tasks.
“During the long stretch of time between courses”
I would add, the long stretch of time between LONG courses. I would argue most courses have plenty of fat that could be removed and reinvested in continuing education between courses.
Have you considered that we already have a kind of MOOC platform in Campus. The problem is, many of the courses are really badly made. I think creating high quality MOOCs is key to the idea. We should look at collaborating with the organisations that have experience producing high quality MOOCs. In fact, maybe we could contract out the production of MOOCs to an external organisation, while we provide the subject matter.
Now to answer your questions:
1. I would like to see a range of courses from soft skills (leadership, teamwork, innovation), lessons learnt about the current operating environment (from current operations we are participating in and other conflicts we are not), future technologies and the future operating environment, job specific education (often missing from our very generalist ACOTC).
2. Commanders to allocate time every week to completed professional education, courses completed to be considered by career management agencies for PACs, certain courses could be mandatory if they replace aspects currently taught on residential courses.
3. As you said, there needs to be a single person with overall responsibility (MOOC coordinator within TRADOC). Input should come from various training centres, AKG, etc. We should then employ an organisation with demonstrated expertise in producing high quality MOOCs (note – this will be expensive).
Good work.
Cheers
Rob
Thanks Rob – you’ve clearly given the proposal a lot of thought, thanks for your ideas.
I’m glad you brought up Campus, as other people have mentioned it to me in person when discussing this proposal. The consensus has been that Campus has limited utility as a tool for PME; that it is best suited for training basic topics (usually surrounding compliance measures). I guess it’s a matter of “the medium is the message” – the medium selected for the delivery of training, its strengths and weaknesses, inevitably has an impact on what is transmitted. A strong PME programme encouraging deep study and original thought probably isn’t suited to Campus.
Thanks for the suggestions regarding the curriculum that could be covered. I hadn’t thought of job specific training – that is an excellent idea. I’ve wondered about the impact the posting cycle has on our organisation. In civilian professions it isn’t unheard of to perform the same role in an organisation for many years, yet we, particularly GSOs, have to adapt to new jobs at least every two years, if not more often. People often joke that they only ever master a role once they leave it. Perhaps short courses on common jobs would help in some small way.
Regarding point 3 (how the course could be run and resourced), you are arguing for a single coordinator who provides the content for courses, acting as an intermediary between the various stakeholders whose material could be turned into courses, while outsourcing the production of the MOOCs. I agree with this outline. The question would then become where should the courses be hosted: an existing MOOC provider, a new open source platform or a restricted platform? This would effect the cost, accessibility and the nature of the content. If courses are to be fairly general, aimed at purely educational matters, an open source platform would be sufficient. If we want them to do more than that, promulgating lessons learned and information about new capabilities, we might have to consider a more secure and expensive platform. Any thoughts on how we could balance or overcome these tradeoffs?
Could not agree more. Connected learning is effective for leader development, particularly if each leader develops a personal learning network and then is educated through MOOC on topics which they, the leader, personally believes important to their personal development. Thanks for sharing. This was actually the topic of my dissertation: Employing Personal Learning Networks for Self-Development of Army Leaders: A Connectivist Approach. My research results support exactly what you suggest. Have talked to Brigadier Ryan about the same. Jim Greer
Thanks Jim, I look forward to reading your research.
John, love the idea.
Taking your idea one step further (and answering your second question) is the idea that we tie this formalized PME into part of the annual PAR. If we structure the learning package correctly, we (as commanders) can use it as a gauge of our subordinates professional development, but also enable the participants to use their learning package as a gauge of personal strengths and weaknesses. With sufficient support and emphasis from the chain of command, such a program can be game changing in reshaping our culture such that the self learning package is the starting point for more active and self actuated PME.
As further incentive, I would suggest the learning modules formulate stepping stones to the more formalized ACOTC courses. This ensures participants on the ACOTC are familiar with the broad concepts and hence are more able to contribute to a group learning environment. Familiarity with foundation doctrine means participants are more able and willing to explore more challenging concepts. They may even be more bold in testing unfamiliar tactics, in an environment moderated by experienced DS.
I would also suggest rather than a static curriculum, the courses also need to incorporate an ability to quickly develop and introduce wider topics covering trends within Defence to assist in ensuring learning remains current. The CTC annual trend analysis is a good starting point, as it covers key strengths and weaknesses observed through each calendar year. Equally importantly, those observations are derived from a wide range of training activities from a number of training units, thus ensuring a more holistic approach.
One possible model may be similar to university degrees – a core component of mandatory units of studies, complemented by a series of electives that round out the studies. This could further be developed, in the fullness of time, to diverge into BOS functions to ensure the education provides more immediate relevance to the training audience. For example, foundation land and / or joint tactics, new capabilities and their employment can form mandatory core units of studies, while elective units of studies addressing various emerging trends can be electives, to enable the participant to enroll in studies that address self diagnosed areas of weakness. Further more, should the learning delivery medium allow for feedback functions to the participants chain of command, a commander can actually direct the participant to partake in electives that addresses weaknesses identified during PRP / PAR.
Hi John,
I am an LT edjo at RED–NT. I’d like to propose essay-writing as an advanced literacy MOOC.
I am currently designing an online course consisting of a 6 module series of lessons on essay-writing. The target audience would be experienced soldiers who require essay-writing instruction IOT write Defence papers, pass EWDA/ASWOC, participate in higher education or separate with a view to applying for AFP, emergency services, APS etc.
Each module would comprise videos of direct instruction, interactive activities and practice writing tasks. Modules would involve instructor-trainee, trainee-instructor and trainee-trainee interactions. The course outcome is for trainees to produce an essay on a military-related topic which is published online.
Any thoughts or suggestions very welcome.
Hi Linda, thank you for your input.
That sounds like a great concept, and exactly the sort of thing that would make this portal worthwhile. If the proposal is supported at DEF [X], one of the first steps should be consultation with the Education Corps. Having an open course platform for courses like yours would increase their availability across Army, expanding your reach. Your comment highlights the opportunity to crowd source content – making this a one-stop-shop for PME short courses across stakeholders.
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