Adaptive Facilitation Skills for Army Instructors
(Room S320D)
30 Nov 17
2:00 PM
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2:30 PM
Given diverse learning populations, to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of training, instructors must meet individual student needs and deliver customized training at the point of need (Martin, 2015). The process of adapting instruction is not a trivial challenge and places many demands on instructors. Given the learner-centric approach described in the U.S. Army Learning Concept for Training and Education 2020-2040 (U.S. Department of the Army, 2017), the Army is one of the many organizations attempting to meet this challenge. Although the majority of Army instructors attend the Foundation Instructor/Facilitator Course (FIFC) and learn a variety of instructional techniques, additional tools are needed to help instructors tailor their small group instruction to the individual Soldier. Compounding the issue, instructors often face schedule, time, and resource constraints, as well as understaffing. Thus, instructors may struggle to adopt a learner-centric approach that facilitates career-long learning. This paper showcases a multi-phase process through which a tool was iteratively developed to help instructors meet these challenges. Army instructors within the Abrams Tank Maintenance Advanced Individual Training (AIT) program served as a use case for investigating how instructors recognize and diagnose individual learner problems, and adaptively employ instructional techniques in near real-time to correct those problems. Following a thorough review of academic and military literature, extensive quantitative and qualitative data were gathered through a series of observations, surveys, and knowledge elicitation sessions with instructors and students. These data helped to pinpoint top challenges students face in the course, associated observable student behaviors, diagnostic techniques, and recommended instructional strategies. Finally, findings from an empirical evaluation study indicated that the instructional tool was found helpful, especially for brand-new o