Becoming a Virtual Learner in the Defense Acquisition Community

Owen Gadeken

The year 2020 has brought dramatic and unanticipated change to the Defense Acquisition Community and to the DAU. We have experienced the disruptive global coronavirus pandemic along with other high-profile news, including police brutality, racial protests, and election-year politics.

Surprisingly, the Defense Acquisition Community has managed a rapid change to doing its business virtually as the workforce becomes the “work from home” force. DAU training and support to the workforce also have transitioned to the virtual environment, but not without some strain and adaptation issues.

Let’s take a look at the issues in adapting what had been a gradual and deliberate DAU transition away from residential (classroom) training to the immediate pivot to online platforms and virtual training. While our response has been rapid, significant issues remain for DAU to not just survive but “thrive” in the virtual environment.

Production-Line Education

In his 2018 book Lessons for the 21st Century, historian Yuval Harari states: “The Industrial Revolution has bequeathed us the production-line theory of education. In the middle of town there is a large concrete building divided into many identical rooms, each room equipped with rows of desks and chairs. At the sound of the bell, you go to one of these rooms together with thirty other kids who were all born the same year as you. Every hour a different grown-up walks in and starts talking. The grown-ups are all paid by the government. … It is easy to laugh at this model, and almost everybody agrees that no matter its past achievements, it is now bankrupt. But so far we haven’t created a viable alternative.”

Actually, this production line (classroom) theory of education goes back much further in time. One of the first discovered classrooms is a Sumerian school for scribes from 2000 B.C. in what is now southern Iraq. This model can still be seen at West Springfield High School in Virginia, where my daughters attended (see photo). Thus, it appears that our education paradigm (framework or set of unwritten rules) has remained virtually unchanged for more than 4,000 years.

The Virtual Learner

Enter the global coronavirus pandemic and everything changed, almost overnight. Granted, we’ve had the technology to do distance learning for several years, but the default (cultural) position has always been classroom education. Still, the rapid shift to working and learning from home left many educational systems, including DAU, scrambling to adapt. Even our vaunted Fairfax County, Virginia, Public School system faced myriad issues, including cybersecurity and online bullying, in launching their distance learning program. They ended up having to shut it down twice and then switch to another learning platform.

So what does this mean for virtual learners in the Defense Acquisition Community? Fortunately, DAU already had embarked on a transformation to distance learning well before the pandemic began. This transition had previously converted most entry level and intermediate courses to online learning, but many mid- and upper-level residence courses remained. Those courses had to make the rapid shift to virtual instructor-led training (VILT). While this switch was handled remarkably well, many issues—both technology and human centered—surfaced and are still being addressed.

Given the number of educational technology platforms available, DAU had the challenge of selecting and then adapting these platforms within our IT infrastructure. With the large and diverse acquisition workforce from the military Services and defense agencies, getting these learners as well as our faculty and staff connected with full video and audio fidelity remains a challenge. In many cases, our students have been better off using their personal computers for training rather than trying to gain access through their government networks and computers. The rapid migration of residential course content to the virtual environment was not new, but accomplishing it in a few weeks presented some difficulty. The majority of our faculty was experienced as distance learning instructors, but other faculty and staff had to be quickly trained in this new environment. As our faculty and students migrated to the virtual environment, our educational platforms also were evolving. Initial DAU offerings on Webex were transitioned to the Microsoft Commercial Virtual Remote (CVR) environment and then to Microsoft Teams for Education. Despite these technology challenges, DAU now has refocused to make this transition as effective and seamless as possible.

Along with the technology challenges have come the human challenges faced by families working, learning, and living at home. An article in The Washington Post (“Why working from home with kids is impossible,” July 12, 2020) profiled a family of four trying to simultaneously work and learn from home. The parents kept a log and found they were interrupted by their school-age children every 3½ minutes. Many DAU students try to multitask (pay attention to texts, e-mail, family members, pets, and their online lessons) and end up not doing well at any of these tasks. DAU instructors have noticed that they often have students who are logged in but are in reality “checked out” during their online lessons.

Another challenge is learning to use the different technology platforms and tools while these platforms are evolving at the same time. Simple things like saving and transferring documents, playing a video, and generating a discussion among class members can become surprisingly difficult using an online platform.

Virtual learning clearly is here to stay and will be the preferred and possibly only form of acquisition training available for the immediate future. It offers the benefits of safety, convenience, cost savings (from travel), as well as flexible time and content, over residential training. The issue now is for acquisition workforce members to adopt this new virtual learner mentality.

The Continuous Learner

We examined above the education paradigm of residential (classroom) training. There is another education paradigm that also impacts our workforce: discrete learning. This paradigm has been an unconscious part of our U.S. educational and career development systems for years. The assumption here is that education takes place early in life to prepare you for a career. Once you achieve the appropriate diploma, degree, or training certification, you have what it takes for a job in your chosen field. With minor updates along the way, your career path is set.

While this may have worked in the industrial economy, it is an outdated framework for today’s rapidly changing world. Education and training have a “half-life” that is becoming ever shorter. A 2017 Deloitte survey of 10,000 business and human resource leaders found that 90 percent of the CEOs think that their organizations face disruptive change driven by new technologies. The report adds that, “Software engineers must now redevelop skills every 12–18 months. Professionals in marketing, sales, manufacturing, law, accounting, and finance report similar demands.”

The Deloitte study points out that employees now recognize that “the learning curve is the earning curve.” They demand access to dynamic learning opportunities that fit their individual needs. Younger employees have grown up in this self-directed learning environment. They expect this to be part of their work environment and will move elsewhere if employers fail to provide it.

With the large and diverse acquisition workforce from the military Services and defense agencies, getting these learners as well as our faculty and staff connected with full video and audio fidelity remains a challenge.  

This and other learning research suggests that our acquisition workforce needs a new paradigm of continuous or lifelong learning. While a continuous learning policy already is in place for the defense acquisition workforce (80 continuous learning points every 2 years), it pales in comparison to what actually is needed to keep pace with the current level of disruption and change.

Instead of a requirement imposed by organizations, we really need a mind shift to make continuous learning part of our desired workplace culture. We should hire, develop, coach, and even fire employees based on their commitment, or lack thereof, to continuous learning.

The Personal Learner

The final paradigm we need to shift is from an organization centered training model to a person-centered learning model. Our current acquisition training paradigm is driven by the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act (DAWIA), originally enacted by Public Law 101-510 in November 1990. It mandates training, education, and experience requirements for all acquisition career fields.

The DAWIA framework has worked well over the years to professionalize career paths and training requirements for the acquisition workforce. The continuous learning policy also has helped our workforce members adapt to change. Unfortunately, the number of training requirements has grown steadily over the years and taken on a “one size fits all” mentality.

The recent shift to a virtual learning environment should be accompanied by a shift to a more flexible learner-centered paradigm. Everyone now is working and learning from home, and our educational approach should adapt to this change. Informal workforce polls show that many workers have become accustomed to this environment and would chose to work mostly from home even when given the opportunity to return to their offices.

Younger employees have grown up in this self-directed learning environment. They expect this to be part of their work environment and will move elsewhere if employers fail to provide it.  

But as we have seen, working and learning from home involve many potential distractions and challenges. So, an effective transition to virtual learning requires that the learner take full responsibility for learning. This represents a psychological shift from relying on DAWIA requirements, human resources, and the management hierarchy to dictate what training is provided and when to take it. Instead, each acquisition professional would be asked to make a learner-centered commitment to lay out their personal development pathway to become a high performer.

For the virtual learner, this commitment can be broken down into the following set of enabling elements.

Have a Purpose (Why)

In his now famous “Start With Why” video, Simon Sinek declares that knowing your “Why” is the most important factor that inspires both organizations and individuals to take action. This also applies to virtual learning. Because you are learning remotely and face many other demands and distractions, it is very important to have a clear purpose to anchor your learning. The clearer the purpose, the more motivated you will become to excel as a virtual learner.

Have a Plan (What)

The amount of educational material available on any acquisition topic is both extensive and diverse. So, you will need to “chunk it down” to bite-size segments that you can learn in the timeframes available. This may mean that some information will be put aside for future reference and some will be skipped over, depending how it impacts your specific learning goals.

Have a Time (When)

Learning takes concentration and uninterrupted time. Most of us have a sense of how and when we learn best during a typical day. There are now “chronotype” surveys that you can take to indicate when your energy level peaks and when you are at your best for learning during the day. Many of us already know this from practical experience.
Having set time periods set aside during the day for learning can be quite useful in completing the different learning modules you’ve laid out for your personal development.

Have a Place (Where)

Another useful aid to virtual learning is dedicated space. Having a separate room or place in your home that can be set aside for an office or for virtual learning will make it much easier for you to transition from worker or family member to learner. It’s not just the physical transition but the psychological transition that helps you “get in the mood” for virtual learning.

Have a Network (Who)

One of the major benefits of residential training is the opportunity to learn in a group setting. Having learners share both their job challenges and experiences is one of the best ways to make learning “stick” as well as to ensure that it transitions to workplace application.

While virtual learning often is portrayed as an individual activity, this is only a starting point. The virtual environment is rapidly expanding to offer new teaming approaches and tools that can mirror the traditional classroom experience with more frequent student and faculty interactions.

Looking to the Future

DAU is reinventing its role to serve the growing community of virtual learners. Following the Marshall Goldsmith motto that “what got you here won’t get you there,” these virtual learners increasingly will try to chart their own path. In addition to certification courses, virtual learners will look for more “just in time” solutions to their learning and job performance needs. They will be open to creating relationships with our faculty and staff where DAU can continue to support their personal and organizational development with tailored virtual responses. While there still will be a place for residential training at DAU, the future of acquisition workforce development now lies in mastering the virtual learning environment. 

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GADEKEN is a professor of Program Management at the Defense Acquisition University in Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

The author can be contacted at [email protected].

Photo sources:
West Springfield High School

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the Department of Defense. Reproduction or reposting of articles from Defense Acquisition magazine should credit the authors and the magazine.