The Cognitive (Information) Age
This is an ongoing series to support Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's reforms of DoD. Here we talk about the lessons learned from trying to reform DoD just over a decade ago.
[Author Note: This oncoming series is from a Marine Corps Gazette article, “Warning to TECOM: Why we failed learning from the past reform efforts” in the JAN 2020 issue. This article got a lot of attention by then TECOM Commander, Major General Bill Mullen. It was read widely, but still did not allow a small group of reformers to succeed at evolving how Marines learned to the next level. The prevailing establishment of the GS mafia (including Senior Executive Service (SeS) employees, either got rid of us by waiting out the few senior Marines that provided top cover for us]
Outcomes-based learning (OBL) is a different system for development, meaning that training and education are not treated as distinct, but are nested under learning. By the way of analogy, OBL is to learning what mission command or mission orders is to operations.10 Instructors are given requirements but not directed how they must achieve them. They are then held accountable for the results.
The doctrine of OBL stresses the development of intangible attributes such as initiative, critical thinking, judgement, and responsibility. The learning philosophy uses observable outcomes to measure the self-development and effectiveness of learning. More importantly, it uses those outcomes to develop more adaptive11 Marines and units that are better prepared for the rigors of 21st century combat.
Outcomes based training and education (OBTE)/OBL is not a program of instruction (POI) or a workshop. Rather, it is an approach to all learning (formal/ informal education and training) that can (and should) be used in every school or POI. It needs to be clear (at the conceptual level) that OBTE/OBL is the Information Age approach that is the best way of getting to what MajGen Mullen defined as the “intellectual edge” in his 18 July 2018 guidance on the direction of Marine learning.
OBL is an approach to planning, managing, and delivering learning. It results in the attainment of a set of holistic, observable, and measurable skills and behavioral traits (outcomes) in individuals and units. It does so by requiring a thorough understanding of the underlying principles and increasing mastery of fundamentals, gained while progressing through a series of increasingly challenging scenarios. These scenarios always require the instructor and student to think and solve problems in context; tasks are taught in context of a problem and not in standalone stepby-step processes used today.
Below is a fictional example of how OBL works in the classroom (we will follow this up later with an example from a unit executing OBL in its daily training by LTC (USMC ret) Tim Jackson).
Begin Fictional OBL centric classroom:
The entering students notice the hand drawn map on the white board. The map is similar to ones they have seen in previous classes but is clearly not the same. The students wonder about the focus of the day’s tactical decision game (TDG) or decision forcing case (DFC) as the class has jumped from focusing on one subject to another and then back again seemingly without a pattern, almost always using TDGs as a foundation. (In most cases, class exercises have required the students to apply many different skills in whatever TDG or DFC the facilitator has created, though one or two take precedence in terms of the discussions and the after-action reviews [AARs] that are always conducted.)
It shortly becomes clear to the students that creating an effective operation order (OPORDs) will be the focus of class today. (The students had started off by reviewing OPORDs in one of their first sessions.) But then they had moved almost immediately to creating them for whatever TDG the facilitator put on the board, beginning with easier scenarios and then moving to more complex situations. The facilitator was never consistent though. One day the class’ primary focus would be on creating an OPORD and then the focus would not return to OPORDs again for a week or so, focusing instead on other, widely varying warfighting skills.
The facilitator reads out the situation (an ambush scenario), describes the map (terrain features, etc.) that has been drawn on the white board, and finally the requirement for the exercise. The facilitator gives a location and intelligence on the enemy as further background. The students are informed that they will have five minutes to plan their mission and to write their OPORD to their (theoretical) squad. (When a student points out that they have never been shown how to conduct an ambush, the instructor simply informs the class that they are to do their best.)
At the end of the five minutes, the facilitator tells the students to stop and hand their papers to their fellow classmates. (The students notice that the instructor even manages to vary the fellow student to whom they are required to hand their paper.) A volunteer is identified to read their OPORD to the rest of the class. The volunteer retrieves her own OPORD and then goes to the white board. When she begins to tell the class what she intends, the instructor stops her and counsels her to read her OPORD to the class exactly as it is written. At the conclusion of the OPORD writing, the instructor asks the class (as she always does when the group practices whatever skill seems to be the focus of the day’s class) for critiques, reminding them that the critique is limited to the volunteer’s OPORD rather than their own.
The facilitator participates in the critiquing process in a very limited way, keeping the discussion moving and focused on constructive feedback. When students provide non-additive comments (“It’s a good plan.”), the facilitator reminds them that open-ended statements are not valuable feedback by themselves and then pushes the commenter to explain why they believe what they believe. When a student piggybacks on another’s comment (“I agree with …”), the facilitator reminds them that we take ownership of our own critique, rather than simply relying on someone else’s opinion.
When a student points out that the volunteer’s OPORD does not use standard terminology, the facilitator nods, but then asks whether the OPORD allows the commenter to understand and explain the nature and purpose of the mission, whether he understands what the squad is to accomplish, whether there are any gaps in the information provided that could cause confusion or uncertainty later, and whether the OPORD presents a viable course of action. When the commenter responds that the OPORD satisfies all these conditions, the facilitator nods and moves the critique on.
After each critique is provided, the presenting student is allowed to reply or defend their OPORD. The students’ progress through each of their OPORDs in this manner. When students use their own words, rather than doctrinal terms, to describe an action, the instructor queries the students to see if anyone knows the accepted doctrinal term and then uses a second white board to memorialize the correct doctrinal term in place of the student’s description. (The facilitator does not criticize the student for his lack of use of doctrinal terminology.)
As the class nears its end, the facilitator stops the presentation of the OPORDs and critiques to conduct an AAR. (By now, the students know that the AAR is coming. It is a ubiquitous feature of every class.) During the AAR, the facilitator shows the students what the actual OPORD looked like for this mission and what the actual squad leader did. (In this case, the mission had been a real one, taken from Marine Corps history.
The facilitator and the Curriculum Design Specialist who teamed to design the course had discovered the mission during their research into lessons learned, the Marine Corps archives, and other historical repositories.) The facilitator asks the students to think about and discuss how their OPORDs differed and why their respective courses of action might have been better or worse, given what they now know. This results in a robust back-and-forth amongst the students, guided/coached by the facilitator.
At the end of the discussion, the facilitator emphasizes that while their OPORDs were good given their still limited exposure, using appropriate doctrinal language standardizes communications, which provides warfighters, as a profession, with a common language (which, in turn, provides maximizes clarity and speed and minimizes the risk of miscommunication).
At the conclusion of the AAR, the facilitator hands out an article that deals with how a small unit leader uses the OPORD as part of the OODA loop to solve a tactical problem. (Next class, during a break in the planned exercise, the students will discuss the impact of the article on their understanding of the OPORD and the OODA loop.) When a student asks the facilitator to define the OODA loop, the facilitator replies, as he has many times before, that the student should look it up and come back next class to inform his peers of his findings.
With that, the class ends and the students depart, talking amongst themselves about how strange this class is compared to all the others they had taken during their childhood and adolescence—and how much they are looking forward to the next one.
Next: “The Attempt at Reform: Army TRADOC”
Notes:
Donald E. Vandergriff, Raising the Bar: Creating and Nurturing Adaptive Leaders to Deal with the Changing Face of War, 2nd Edition, (Charleston, SC: Create Space, May 2012). Thanks to LTC Chad Foster, USA, for his insights. This fictional story is based on classes taught using the same method at the United States Military Academy, West Point, NY, the U.S. Army Reconnaissance Course at Fort Benning, GA, and selected U.S. Army Reserve Officer Training Corps programs.
Donald Vandergriff, “From Swift to Swiss: Tactical Decision Games and their place in Military Education and Performance Improvement,” Performance Improvement, (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2006).
Headquarters Marine Corps, MCDP 1-3, Tactics, (Washington, DC: June 1997).
Morgan Darwin, “Developing Outcomes, Presentation at the U.S. Army Asymmetric Warfare Group Workshop on Outcomes-Based Training and Education,” (Laurel, MD: Applied Physics Laboratory, March 2009). The word Adaptive seems to have taken on a platitudelike state for the Marines. We repeat it without knowing what it means or whether we are all defining it the same way. Adaptability is “the ability to appropriately adjust—a strategic, an approach, a skill, a COA, etc.,—in response to a given situation, a given set of stimuli or shift thereof.” Things we need to be adaptive: 1. Recognition (that adaptation is required). 2. Understanding (of what is needed/how to execute). 3. Capability (to communicate and execute). 4. Incentive (to do so). 5. Feedback (re: whether actions require further adaptation).
M. Darwin, “Outcomes Based Training and Education, Fostering Adaptability in Full Spectrum Operations brief,” (Asymmetric Warfare Group, Fort Meade, MD: December 2008). 13. Commander’s Guidance to TECOM.
M. Darwin, “Outcomes Based Training and Education, Fostering Adaptability in Full Spectrum Operations brief,” (Asymmetric Warfare Group, Fort Meade, MD: December 2008).