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The cadre the 20-week Field Artillery Captain's Career Course (FACCC) recently finished a rapid redesign of the FACCC program of instruction (POI) in 27 days. Given the current operating environment (COE), we knew we could not complete the redesign using the traditional deliberate instructional design process that, for a course this size, could have taken years to complete; thus, we had to "think anew and act anew" to develop a model to conduct a rapid redesign.
This article describes why we redesigned the FACCC, what the process is and what the new more relevant course presents to officers who attend it. This redesign model can be used to rapidly incorporate COE lessons learned in other courses, including those at other schools.
Background. Anyone who attended the FACCC during the last decade understands why we redesigned the course. The old POI last taught in February was similar to the POI taught during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1991. Although our Army occupies much of the same battlespace today as in these past operations, the operational environment presents radically different challenges and demands. The training our officers and future commanders receive must reflect those challenges and demands.
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Our professional military education must train agile, adaptive leaders. Our courseware for these future fire support officers (FSOs), staff officers and commanders also must be agile and adaptive.
In late 2005, the FACCC cadre began to develop a vision for the redesign of the FACCC. The cadre set a goal to complete the redesign by FY07 with an implementation date of calendar year 2007. This plan seemed aggressive as compared to the traditional deliberate courseware development described in Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Regulation 350-70 Systems Approach to Training Management, Processes and Products.
In 2006, the cadre began to develop products to facilitate the redesign. We drafted core competencies, a revised critical task list and a proposed "roadmap" for the course content and practical exercises (PEs) using a continuous scenario based on the TRADOC common teaching scenario (CTS). The cadre also received instruction from the Director of the Field Artillery Center Quality Assurance Office (QAO) on developing lesson plans using the experiential-based learning model.
On 22 February the redesign plan drastically changed. After gaining the approval of the Chief of FA, Major General David C. Ralston, the Assistant Commandant (AC) of the FA School, Colonel Mark McDonald, and 30th FA Regiment Commander, Colonel Anthony J. Puckett, ordered us to redesign FACCC in a unique manner: stand down two FACCC classes comprised primarily of veterans of the Central Command (CENTCOM) theater and use their expertise to redesign the FACCC in a matter of weeks.
The AC issued his guidance on 22 February: "Begin redesigning the course on 6 March (D+0) and implement the new POI on 20 March (D+14); shut down the FACCCs and leverage the skills and experiences of the students; use the time between 22 February (D-12) and 6 March (D+0) to develop a plan to execute the redesign. Capture the COE, counterinsurgency (COIN) operations and operational lessons learned in the POI, but don't extend the current course's length."
Because we are most familiar with the military decision-making process (MDMP), our rapid redesign followed that process. As reflected in Figure 1, we developed the timeline using the Army operational process to describe the phases of the rapid redesign: plan, prepare, execute and assess.
This rapid redesign process combines many of the steps in the systems approach...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos
have been removed from this article.
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