Military Review English Edition November-December 2013 | Page 24
helps students become agile with collaborative tools
in the current and future operational environments.17
As to weaknesses, students reported feeling unprepared for interagency and multinational settings, they
did not find similar growth compared to resident
students in developing critical field grade skills, and
they had more issues with effective collaboration
in planning and executing the Military Decision
Making Process.18 The Research and Development
Corporation also found that while both virtual teams
and collocated teams can achieve the same learning
objectives, “virtual groups experience more hurdles
to collaboration on complex tasks.”19 One of RAND’s
concluding recommendations is to reduce some of
the social aspects of the course that make it so challenging for the student. For example, RAND recommends that AOC have fewer synchronous exercises,
but make them greater in-depth, while shifting some
collaborative activities to higher-level computer based
instructions.20
There is one social aspect of AOC by distributed
learning that should never be removed—the bonding,
through shared experiences, of a staff group made
up of diverse branches and geographically dispersed
officers. Students often discover they work with or
live near each other, and in many cases seek out local
classmates to collaborate on assignments. Some
teams connect using social networking sites such as
Facebook, and at least one group continues to share
a weekly newsletter. Many AOC facilitators also
transition to career-long mentors of former students
as they progress in their careers.
Conclusion
Many years before Army Learning Concept 2015
was published, the Command and General Staff
College and School began pushing its renowned
resident program to over 100 resident sites with
the help of other Army installations and The Army
School System, as well as through an ever-evolving
correspondence program. Today, Command and
General Staff School maintains the Command and
General Staff Officer Course curriculum for all
venues across the Army, making it globally accessible through the Blackboard learning management
system. The school established and professionally
staffed the Department of Distance Education to
manage the distance-learning instruction of the
core course and AOC through a virtual classroom of excellence. The Department of Distance
Education continues to improve its instructional
approaches and exploit the latest technologies,
such as smart phones and tablets and the dot-com
domain, to make professional military education
as accessible and up-to-date as possible for all
mid-grade officers.
No school or program can rest on its accomplishments, especially when professional military education is critical to developing leaders who run the
Army and lead our soldiers in unified land operations. The Command and General Staff College and
School will continue to learn, adapt, and improve
to educate officers serving at the operational edge.
Ad bellum pace parati (prepared in peace for
war).21 MR
NOTES
1. U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Pam 525-8-2, The
Army Learning Concept for 2015 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office
[GPO], 2011), 16.
2. Elvid Hunt and Walter Lorence, History of Fort Leavenworth 1827-1937 (1981),
221.
3. U.S. Army Directive 2012-21, Optimization of Intermediate-Level Education
(14 September 2012).
4. TRADOC Pam 525-8-2, 62.
5. U.S. Army Regulation (AR) 350-1, Army Training and Leader Development
(Washington, DC: GPO, 2011), 71.
6. U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) Circular 350-1
(2012), 17.
7. Les Gramkow, Program Manager of Satellite Campuses, U.S. Army Command
and General Staff School, 10 May 2013.
8. WHINSEC History at , (14 May 2013).
9. CGSC, Institutional Self Study, September 1975, 109, , (14 May 2013).
10. TRADOC Pam 350-7-12, Distributed Learning—Managing Courseware
Production and Implementation, March 2004, 52, (13 May 2004).
11. CGSC, Non-Resident Intermediate Level Education Self-Study, September
2007, iii, found at
(14 May 2013).
12. CGSC Circular 350-1 (2012), 3.
13. Raymond A. Kimball and Joseph M. Bylerly, “To Make Army PME Distance
Learning Work, Make It Social,” Military Review (May-June 2013): 31.
14. Susan G. Straus, Michael G. Shanely, James C. Crowley, Douglas Yeung,
Sarah H. Bana, and Kristin J. Leuschner, Evalutating Army Leader Education (Santa
Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2012), xxiii.
15. TRADOC Pam 525-8-2, 61.
16. Susan G. Straus, Michael G. Shanely, James C. Crowley, Douglas Yeung,
Sarah H. Bana, Megan Clifford, and Kristin J. Leuschner, Enhancing Critical Thinking
Skills for Army Leaders Using Blended-Learning Methods (Santa Monica, CA: RAND
Corporation, 2012), 71.
17. Ibid., 71.
18. Ibid., 72.
19. Ibid., 70.
20. Ibid., 75.
21. Motto on the CGSC Shield, CGSC Circular 350-1, v.
November-December 2013
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