Information Age Learning?
Posted on: November 18,2019
The Navy and Marine Corps are asking a lot of hard questions about learning. We are faced with a future operating environment in which we will have neither a technological nor numerical advantage over our adversaries in Great Power Competition. What we have come to realize is that the Naval Service will only win if it is better trained and educated than our adversaries. We need to out-cycle them; to observe, orient, decide and act with greater relative speed. We need an intellectual advantage.
“What is needed is an information age approach that is focused on active, student-centered learning using a problem-posing methodology where our students/trainees are challenged with problems they tackle as groups in order to learn by doing and also from each other.”
Gen David H. Berger
38th Commandant’s Planning Guidance
The Commandant’s Planning Guidance (CPG) clearly states that our current industrial model of education is not producing a force that is prepared for the modern battlefield. Why is this? Is it merely a question of tablets in the classroom and on the training range or does this go deeper? The statement of the Commandant suggests that we are still squarely rooted in industrial-age practices, “lecture, memorize facts, regurgitate facts on command…what to think and what to do instead of how to think, decide and act.”
How then should the Naval Service move from the classrooms of the 19th century into the 21st?
“We must transform our legacy approach of training and education to advance the intellectual edge of our Marines and the combat effectiveness of our units. Going forward, we must leverage (more fully) the growing bodies of knowledge in adult learning, human performance science, and talent management…”
Maj Gen William F. Mullen, III
TECOM Vision and Strategy, 2019
So what does this mean for the Marine Corps? What is this information age model? How does it bring us into the 21st Century? What will it allow us to do? How does it prepare us for the modern battlefield?
“New classroom delivery models allow us to re-imagine new combinations of educator expertise, time, instructional materials, research, physical space…and (yes) technology in ways that achieve optimal outcomes for students. They begin not by assuming the current model but rather by understanding what it is we want students to be able to do, the measures of success, the resources we have to work with, and our own sense of possibility.”
Joel Rose
How to Break Free of Our 19th-Century Factory-Model Education System, The Atlantic
So what does this look like? Have you looked at the Commandant’s Reading List? Why are Ender’s Game and Ready Player One on there? These books are just children’s science-fiction. What could they possibly tell us about learning in the future? What do you think?
Comments
Information Age learning is the wrong term which is going on today. Too many people confuse this with using technology to solve our learning dilemma today-how to teach people to be more adaptive and exercise moral courage and judgement, prepare them for the stress of combat. Ironically, the tools exist from hundreds of years ago, and employed properly today, can greatly enhance how people learn and get better (evolve). Additionally, learning science has come a long way in the last 20 years, led by Dr. Robert Bjork at UCLA. He titled a briefing to the Army in 2006 the way we train is backwards to the way we learn. Despite, this well documented warning, the Army and Marines continued and continue today to use Industrial-age methods (rote memorization and PPT supported lectures to masses of people through online mandatory classes or in the classroom instructor-centric approaches. We must take the Commandant’s Planning Guidance to heart, we must teach the way we want to fight (Maneuver Warfare), and a methodology does exist. It is called Outcomes Based Learning (OBL).
This past weekend, I had an interesting conversation with a friend who is currently an MCU student. We were discussing coursework and he shared that he had 1400 pages to read by Wednesday. 1400 pages…for one seminar. How much of that will he retain and be able to apply later? To top that their seminar on WWII only briefly touched on North Africa He was interested in studying the Eastern Front and South East Asia. If we are going to transition to OBL, then what is the balance between reading load and the student determining what he/she feels relevant to their current and future station (Adult Learning)? What equates to a more rigorous course, in your professional opinion? For me, I think that reading should have happened prior to attending MCU. Could time at MCU be better spent in experiential group learning? “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” -Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics.
Roy,
Great points and question. The answer is documented in Dr Bjork’s, Dr Gudmundsson’s works, as well as military history. Instead of cramming pages to read, give a great forcing case to teach military history, and then the student read what they want afterwards. Also, when divided into learning groups to encourage peer to peer learning, provide ideas for reading, let the group delegate, then have to provide a short brief back to the entire class on what they got out of the reading. Prior to a class or course, provide questions to the potential students, and let they decide what to read to answer them. Rigorous used to be defined as amount, but in reality, it is making the student figure out how to answer and what to answer with. It is called struggling to find the answer in a fail safe environment.
Dr. Bruce Gudmundsson Tactical Decision Game Handbook.
file:///C:/Users/donald.vandergriff/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/Content.Outlook/EYW9VL3Q/Decision%20Games%20(1-7).pdf
Thanks for posting this . Tools like Dr. Gudmundsson’s handbook are critical for this leap to the 21st c in learning support. The Navy has been working on Ready Relevant Learning as one eLearning platform to provide modernized, self-paced, on-demand, Fleet-responsive learning resources as a part of their Total Learning Architecture. The Marine Corps is currently working on updating Training & Readiness Manuals to be interactive (linked to TDGs, Case Studies and interactive Force on Force Simulations). Dr. Gudmundsson is on the right track as usual. Every Lieutenant and NCO is a curriculum developer / training designer for their platoon / section / squad. Resources like this TDG handbook are great to help them execute OBL in their small corner of the Corps.
In its broadest conception, OBL is an approach to planning, managing, and delivering learning that uses observable outcomes to measure student development and learning effectiveness. OBL centers on engaging students in framing problems and solving them and evaluating primarily on results achieved, rather than by strict adherence to preferred methods or processes. Under OBL, methods and processes are considered important guides or tools which do not have the same priority in evaluation as a student’s ability to successfully adapt to the perceived needs of a given situation or to find a better solution via a non-standard approach. Most importantly, OBL emphasizes students learning the why – the underlying concept and reasoning for an action or choice – and not just the “what” and “how,” so that the student develops the intangible attributes, such as initiative, critical thinking, and judgment, required for effective maneuver warfare