How Air Force is Designing Classroom Instruction for the Future

By John Ohab

It will come as no surprise that the Air Force has a systematic approach for just about everything, including how our instruction is developed!

Our formal process is called Instructional System Development, or ISD, and it applies to all personnel who plan, design, develop, implement, approve, administer, conduct, evaluate, or manage Air Force instruction. The goal of Air Force ISD is to ensure our personnel are trained to do their job in the most cost efficient and effective way possible.

In many ways, our education and training have remained unchanged for quite some time. The ISD process has served us well and will continue to be a solid basis for our course development efforts. The one area in which we will need to make some updates or to at least think differently is in our design, and that design will rely heavily on good analysis.

We are experimenting with presenting instruction in virtual worlds and using mobile applications for ancillary course delivery and also for mobile referencing. In this departure from traditional classroom instruction, we will need to carefully consider the context of our instruction. Since a virtual or mobile learning environment can be just about anything, the task of designing instruction will be more extensive and complex which will make designing instruction more time consuming than traditional classroom instruction.

In virtual worlds, the instructional designer must consider architecture, learning spaces, and how students will interact with each other – how much realism is enough? For both virtual and mobile learning, the instructional designer will have to consider learner interactions such as voice and text – how much interaction will be enough?  Especially important for mobile learning is to present the information in small chunks, from about two to ten minutes. Presenting information in such small amounts is quite different from what we are used to!

The basis of the Air Force ISD process is still solid.  However, as we move away from traditional classroom instruction, it will be more important than ever to conduct a thorough analysis.  For our non-traditional instruction, the skill or task to be taught is still the first consideration, and we have always taken into consideration what our learners come to us with, but now we have to carefully consider the environment, or context, in which our learners will be and the technical components required to get the instruction to the learner.  Lacking or non-existent analysis will lead to designing instruction that doesn’t meet the needs of our customers and spending money on something that our learners will not use.

For more information about developing instruction in immersive environments, I suggest Learning in 3D Adding a New Dimension to Enterprise Learning and Collaboration by Karl M Kapp and Tony O’Driscoll.

This is the final post in the Air Education and Training Command’s five-part series on advanced learning technology. In previous posts, we explored mobile learning systems, virtual reality, simulations and gaming, and knowledge management.