James C. Crowley

This title summarizes discussions with over 450 Army officers (lieutenants through colonels) about leader development in Army units. These discussions revealed that the type and extent of leader development activities vary greatly across units, but that they are generally informal and most heavily influenced by the unit commander. The authors conclude with suggestions on how the Army school system can improve leader development.

This report presents the results of a project supporting the Army s efforts to adapt its weapon training strategies to better support operational requirements and unit readiness processes, take full advantage of training technologies, and increase efficiency. It outlines directions the Army could take to improve its weapon training strategies and the processes for adapting them."

The authors evaluated the effectiveness of the Common Core the first phase of the U.S. Army's system for developing critical thinking skills in its officer corps and the extent of differences among course venues: distributed, resident, and mixed delivery. Future evaluation should focus on whether the best possible outcomes within venues, rather than equivalent outcomes across venues, are achieved."

The U.S. Army s Command and General Staff School offers its Advanced Operations Course (AOC) for junior field-grade officers using both traditional resident instruction and a model referred to as blended distributed learning (BDL). This report assesses the effectiveness of AOC-BDL based on student and graduate surveys and identifies best practices for BDL from empirical research and case studies."

An important component of The Army Distributed Learning Programas (TADLPas) performance is the quality of its courses, which consist primarily of asynchronous interactive multimedia instruction (IMI). However, there are no current efforts to assess course quality at the program level. This report outlines a comprehensive approach to evaluating the quality of IMI within TADLP. In addition, it describes how a program-level evaluation program developed at RAND might be implemented within the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC). RAND assessed the quality of the learning experience in a sample of recently fielded IMI courses, using criteria based on standards in the training development community. The analysis identifies strengths and deficiencies in technical, production quality, and pedagogical aspects of IMI courseware. This research demonstrates a feasible method for evaluation that can supply TRADOC with metrics concerning IMI quality, points to directions for needed improvements, and provides a basis for assessing improvement initiatives. The authors recommend adoption of this approach, as well as further development of other components of a comprehensive program of IMI training evaluation.

The Army wishes to improve its training strategy for Brigade Combat Teams equipped with Future Combat Systems (FCS) technologies. Key findings are that live training events will remain a cornerstone of FCS unit training, and that adaptation to changing operational requirements will be a challenge. Planned enhancements will provide important improvements for the system, but the overall training capability achieved will fall short of requirements.