NETC Acquisition Planning Framework for Managing Training Delivery Requirements

Abstract

In 2015, we conducted an analysis of the Science of Learning (SoL) literature to determine how the Navy might augment or modify its current practices with regard to training system development and employment to better account for how Sailors learn, how they develop expertise, and how they retain that expertise over time. The goal of that work was to develop a methodology that would inform the training system design process in a way that could predict training outcomes to a reasonable degree within the constraints that it could not require a major overhaul of the existing procedures that NETC currently uses. We reported the results of this study in (Darken & McDowell, 2017A). All training starts with recognition and identification of a human performance shortfall. Personnel need to be able to execute a specific set of tasks at a specified level of performance. The process ends with a training solution being developed and/or employed. However, what happens in between is the concern of this report. Under perfect conditions (e.g. adequate resources, time, and support) a training requirement is analyzed by identifying exactly what tasks need to be trained and exactly what level of performance is required. To be completed properly, this requires (a) a detailed task analysis to a usable level of detail, and (b) measures of performance (MOP) that are known to measure the skill level of the performer on the real world task. If we have a detailed task analysis and training objectives (the objective, trained performance level of the trainee), then these should inform the design of the training intervention. Here is where media selection occurs, sequencing of materials, and pacing of instruction that all make up the final course of instruction (COI). However, often the process is short-circuited by jumping directly from the requirement to the solution without analysis, or the analysis is abbreviated with a high-level task analysis that does not inform the training designer about the demands of the tasks to be trained.