Another Revolution in Training?
The Navy is creating another Revolution in Training within the fleet. It’s well intended, but as in most things, it has both good and bad in it. After soundly perusing the new website delineating all the ballyhoo and propaganda information, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s the same old thing, but with a computerized face.
About a year ago, I wrote a review ( http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/us_n... ) of the Navy’s move to online courses for both advancement and general knowledge areas. My conclusion is that they weren’t as effective as they could be. So now the CNO and his team has created a new “Sailor Continuum,” which is intended to represent the cradle to grave (from a career standpoint) development of our shipmates, and is available on the new website describing the program ( http://www.excel.navy.mil ).
The site and associated articles in various Navy publications tout the wonder of the new approach as a whole, but I think that they’re overselling a product that has known defects.
The plan seems to be two-fold: Online courses and new partnerships with business and academic institutions.
I’m all for anything that will increase the knowledge and abilities of my shipmates. Online courses aren’t the best way to do that though. Like the paper correspondence courses of old, they are educationally suspect for the most part, and far too much like a quick fix. The Navy’s seeming desire to depend on them for future training needs frankly scares me.
There is a “Look at the Future” article on the site, which describes in happy detail the career of a Master Chief of the Navy candidate in the year 2028. She joins in 2003, by which time, of course, she can take learning style inventories online, be detailed by the recruiter online (no more classifiers in MEPS, apparently), have a personalized, self-paced education plan in place and start out on her road to success before she ever goes to boot camp. Nice fairy tale, but hardly grounded in reality.
The basis for this appears to be a belief that everyone will be motivated equally to complete these online programs, and that the Navy will have the funds and personnel to be all things to all learners of every style. We can’t do that now, and given the funding and program management problems we have for the programs in place currently, does anyone really expect this to work any better starting next year than it does now?
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