(upbeat music) - The Air Force has announced the creation of a new information operations technical training school. - First men simply must arm our airmen to outthink, outperform, out-partner, out-innovated any potential adversary. - Air Force basing military training has an updated curriculum with a new focus on readiness and lethality. - The first command, The Air Force Starts Here. (boom) - Hey, hey, everyone. Welcome in to episode number 24 on The Air Force Starts Here. Thanks for the subscribe, stream or download, however you might be listening in. Of course, now on Google Play and Spotify in addition to Apple Podcasts as well as the AETC website, so we really appreciate you taking some time out today and joining us. If you got some extra time, we certainly would like a great review or even some stars. Of course only five stars are allowed. Just kidding, but five stars are always appreciated. So let us know how we're doing, bringing you timely and relevant info across the recruit, train and educate worlds. My name is Dan Hawkins from the Air Education and Training Command Public Affairs Office and your host for this professional development podcast dedicated to bring total force big A airmen insight, tips, tricks, and lessons learned from the recruiting, training and education field. So if you've been following us for a while you might recall that our first podcast that we ever did focused on the curriculum changes that were happening at Air Force Basic Military Training and those changes were implemented to insure graduates are more lethal and ready to contribute to the Air Force mission to fly, fight and win. And so now, fast forward a little bit over a year, 23 episodes later, and we are back at BMT and Joint Base San Antonio, Lackland inside the gateway wing this time to talk to Captain Tyler Hoff, a BMT Flight Commander with the 321st Training Squadron about an adaptive learning, cooperative research and development agreement that's tied the general web's priority of transforming the way we learn through the aggressive and cost-effective modernization of education and training. So as part of this no-cost agreement for the Air Force, two BMT flights were issued personal computers from Microsoft with all of their BMT lessons loaded inside an adaptive learning software program from a company called Cerego, and it's designed to help students learn material more efficiently and retain knowledge longer through an adaptive personalized learning tool that provides realtime feedback to both the students and the instructors to optimize their learning experience instead of the way that we've always traditionally done it through out old hard copy paper textbooks that you might remember in your backpack pulling out in the dining facility line for example if you had five minutes to study, so it's really interesting what we're trying to do with technology, and speaking from a force development perspective the hope is that this software that's being used will hope focus instruction for the students in academic areas that have been identified as potentially weak for individual airmen and really tailor that experience in a learner-centric way where their knowledge gaps are, with the end goal of course hoping that airmen learn more efficiently. Captain Hoff goes in depth on the five W's of this cooperative research and development agreement, including which I found to be really interesting, the innovation aspect of this beta test because he talks about it wasn't just technology being introduced, but the process that they use at BMT was constantly being shifted around as they kind of went through the process and learned what worked and what didn't, so you might enjoy that. Part of the conversation as well, he will also spend some time talking about some of the early returns of the beta test both from a positive and perhaps negative angle for both the trainees and the BMT cadre perspectives, along with what's next moving forward now that the data collection phase of the beta test is complete, and so 100 trainees participated in this, two flights, a female and a male flight participated in this. They got issued the laptops on their very first day, full day I should say of Basic Military Training and they just wrapped up their end-of-course on January 21st, not scheduled to graduate BMT until early February, but that's a little bit of background on the participants. And on a side note, if you haven't been at BMT in some time or if you've never seen it up close and personal at all, from the military training instructors to the squadron group and wing leadership, it really is a first-class operation and pretty amazing to see first hand. It's loud, it's proud. Full of energy, and producing exceptional airmen out to our Air Force. So, let's march right in. Episode 24 of The Air Force Starts Here kicks off right now. (whirring) So, Captain Hoff, tell us a little bit about yourself. - All right, so I'm Captain Tyler Hoff. I am an Air Craft Maintenance Officer by trade, however I've been down here at Basic Military Training at Lackland Air Force Base for about 18, 19 months. Pulled out of my career field, came down here and jumped right into the training environment and I've loved it ever since. Certainly miss my career field, but I have enjoyed my time down here at Basic Military Training. I've got a wife at home, a baby on the way, and a dog that is the coolest little dude on the planet. And... Really, yeah. Yeah, that's me. (chuckling) - So, busy job, you're a Flight Commander here at the 321st Training Squadron And for those of you who maybe have never been to a BMT complex, or if you have it may have been a while, these are busy places so we'll set the battle space for you. It may get loud, you may hear some loud speakers in the background, but there's generally a lot of chaos going on here at BMT and so as we look to talk about adaptive learning and some of the lessons that you guys have learned throughout this beta test process, I kinda wanted to start with why, why do we need to look at new ways to introduce things like technology or adaptive learning into the Basic Military Training setting? - So I think that we need to do that because we... We as a society are advancing, we are advancing outside of the military environment, outside of the DoD. If you look at the way our children learn in schools now, they learn much more... They learn differently than the rest of us did. I grew up with books and highlighters, whereas people that are in school now are learning with computer-based learning and adjusting... The times are changing, so it's time for us to change and adjust the way that we present our information to our trainees. Because we're getting those trainees that are from that generation that have learned that way and it's a much more familiar environment than say, "Hey, trainee, welcome to Basic Military Training. "Here's a 500 and some odd page book. "Learn it all." So I think we need to change because the outside world is changing, and that's why we decided to implement and run this pilot test where we brought that adaptive learning platform into basic training. - So if you could maybe just kind of set the stage and kind of just explain A, the fact that this is part of a cooperative research and development agreement, and who the players are and how this kind of just came together because I know that this actually, for Sergeant Theo from Headquarters AETC and a lot of other people, this has been a process that's been in the planning mode for quite a while? - Right. So all the way back when General Kwast was the AETC Commander, in line with Chief Staff of the Air Force call for innovation and that initiative, the brainchild was kind of brought to life of "Well, what if we introduced that to our basic trainees "as the earliest point of accession "for our enlisted airmen?" And then I believe Sergeant Theo was actually as a convention where he saw an adaptive learning platform in use and it kind of clicked. So that's where that process began. Probably late fall, early winter of 2018 where AETC developed that cooperative research and development agreement with a company based out of California called Cerego and... Per that agreement at no cost to the Air Force, we would be able to test their platform in our basic training arena per se, and then they brought in a few subcontractors to help with that. They brought in Microsoft and a support company called ITG to provide support for those Microsoft tablets that were provided for the beta test. - So for the laymen, what is... I think most people probably understand, "Oh, they brought in computers" but the software piece of this, the adaptive learning, what is kind of the intent and the hope using this platform? - So the beautiful part about that platform is that it takes all of the information that we would usually teach a trainee. Our curriculum team here at Basic Military Training had to convert all of that out of that 500 page book and load it into this platform, and our trainees are still seeing the same information, they're just seeing it in a different format. It's more segmented, where each lesson is broken out almost like chapters would be, but each one is classified as a different lesson within that online platform. And the really cool thing about that is our trainees can jump in and they start to study, and once they've gone through the information, they've read through it, questions are presented to them just like questions would be presented to them at the end of a chapter as a review question. They answer those questions. Right or wrong, they move on. However, Cerego has an algorithm that looks at when a trainee last saw this information, what high miss questions they missed, what questions they got right and based off of all the data on their platform, it identifies when that trainee needs to see that information again as it's fading from their memory. And it reintroduces the information at an optimal moment where it's fading from that trainee. Well then at that point, they see that information again and their retention goes up and as it fades, they'll see it again. And as it fades, they'll see it again, so it constantly shifts and adapts to that trainee, so this is not a instructor coming in saying, "Okay, it's been a while since you've studied this lesson, "everybody go study this." It's trainee one is struggling in this topic, so they're gonna see that more often. Well, maybe trainee two's struggling with something else. So it's an individualized experience. Individualized experience for those trainees and it's adapted specifically for them. - So it really speaks to that forced development that AETC is really pushing towards a learner-centric environment with individualized learning that's tailored potentially to each student per se as opposed to, like you talked about, that mass peanut butter spread where, "Because I said so, go read Chapter 23" well, not every airmen needs to necessarily read Chapter 23 again, but maybe there are some that do. - Right, exactly. And then those that don't can use that time to effectively study the area that they're lacking in. - I mean, so that is really cool. So what does that look like in actual application? So, the last time I was here was actually on the very first day, which was for these trainees, around 100-ish trainees, their very first full day in Basic Military Training wearing the OCP's fresh out of clothing issue and they're getting issued this laptop computer really in essence or a tablet in a very hectic environment, so kind of talk us through what that looked like and what kind of stressors that potentially added not only for the trainees, but also your team. - Right. So that day was definitely an interesting day. So, like you said it was the first day that they'd been here. They got here the night prior, they went to be anywhere from 10 o'clock to two o'clock. Some of them maybe even a little bit later. Well, 5:45 the next morning, wake up, let's go. I know you're tired, suck it up, Buttercup, we gotta press on. So that morning, no kidding, our trainees got up, they ate breakfast, they processed, went to medical, got their pay card, got their hair cut, were issued their uniforms, came back, ate lunch and then came up to see us in that classroom. As they walked into that classroom we issued each trainee in the room, which totaled out to be 100 trainees, 52 female trainees in my female flight and 48 male trainees in my male flight. Issued out 100 tablets to them and I'm sure that was not what they expected coming to Basic Military Training. I think they expected more of a "Hey, here's your textbook, go." At that point, that's when we notified them, "Hey, these flights were selected to be "a part of a beta test, "so you're helping make... "Potentially make changes that are gonna impact airmen "for years and years and year to come." However, that in and off itself presented a new level of stress for these trainees. We have about a 14-day, I don't wanna say grace period, but a 14-day period of... For them to acclimate to our environment. Very high stress, first two weeks are... You're constantly moving. We added a new variable of "Hey, here's a tablet "that you are entrusted in keeping safe "and in working condition." So that definitely added a whole new level of stress. Now, fast forward about a week into the middle of the first week of training. Once all the processing is done and we start really jumping into the first classroom environment setting, study time became a little stressful for the first couple of weeks because as... As with any pilot test, it is there to identify your strong areas and your weak areas. We very quickly identified some areas that we need to improve upon if we were to go full scale. And we had some connection issues which stressed some trainees out because they weren't able to get on and they're sitting there thinking, "Oh my goodness, I need to access my study guide, "but I can't get it because I can't connect." So that added a whole level of stress. Not just for our students, but for our instructors because my instructors and I are having daily meetings of "Hey, how are we gonna fix this? "What are we gonna do? "Do we need to break 'em up into study groups? "Do we need to disperse them so we have enough bandwidth "for them all to get on?" Which is eventually what we ended up doing. And then as soon as we did that, our trainees were able to access all their information, stress levels went down. Stress levels went down for everybody involved because we were able to start progressing in our curriculum. And then out of that we started seeing trainees that were more engaged, more excited because they were learning in a way that was familiar to most of them. Not all of them, we certainly had a couple that had never learned in this type of way, but the majority of them had been, they were familiar with "computer based training", and because it was familiar to them they became more comfortable. We also saw these flights, I don't wanna say that they came together faster because all flights come together relatively quick at basic training, but they were forced to overcome challenges earlier on because there we some people that had never used computers and the tech-savvy trainees took it upon themselves to help out those that were like me, not tech-savvy at all, which introduced that organic team-building exercise that we didn't even have to provide them. Some adjustments there, definitely some adjustments in our instructors schedule because they had to make sure that they were tracking "You need extra time to get your tablets in the morning." You used to be able to toss your 500 page textbook in your backpack and go, well, now I gotta make sure everybody's tablet's charged and they go grab 'em and unplug 'em and quickly, yet safely put them in their backpack so there's no damage. So a little bit of stress added for the instructors there. - And really no template to kinda draw upon... I'm sure the whole "Is your tablet charged?" never really crossed your mind until the next day when "Is your tablet charged?" (laughing) - Right, sit down in class, open it up, "My tablet's dead." "Did you charge it last night?" "No?" "Well, that's why." - Yeah, exactly. So, I think there probably is a sub set of people out there who would say, "Okay, well, we gave them these tablets, "they're in basic training, they have access "to all of these interwebs, world wide web." But that's not really in essence how that worked. There was quite a few restrictions in terms of what they can actually do with these tablets and they're all related to learning. - Correct, so we absolutely restricted what our trainees were able to access. Because of this being a pilot test, if this were to go full scale then there would be an enterprise solution for how to do that, but because it was a pilot test we had to get a little creative. And what we did was since we were working off of surface probes, we used a feature that was already built in to Microsoft and was the... I'm blanking on the actual term, but it was a family construct where you create one parent computer. That parent computer controls X number of child computers and you completely limit what that computer can access. So we were able to limit it down to our trainees could log onto the internet but they could only access the Cerego webpage, and the splash page that they had to click "Yes, I accept" to sign in on the learning WiFi system. Those were the only two webpages they could get to. If a trainee were to try and go to a social media webpage, a message would pop up that says, "You do not have permission "to access this website." We were able to, working with all of our team partners, the camera were completely disabled, so no cameras were allowed into the dormitory setting while trainees were in the state of undress. We also received notifications if a trainee were to breach any of the established rules, so for instance, if we were not able to limit the trainee's ability to access the App Store, but we were notified if a trainee purchased or downloaded an app. We were able to limit the ability to purchase, so anything requiring money, they weren't able to get, but case and point, I had a tablet download the Hulu app, which is a video streaming app. Well, within an hour of the download, we received notification of "Hey, trainee so-an-so downloaded this streaming app." And then we were able to in real time go and, "Hey, what are you doing? "Why'd you do that? "You know you're not allowed to do that. "Come on now." And then pursue disciplinary action as needed. And then for screentime, our trainees go to bed at 21h00, they wake up at 05h45. Between the hours of 21h00 and 05h30, it was an expensive paperweight. They couldn't access their tablets. If they were to turn it on, open it up, a message popped up that says, "Due to your screentime limits, "you cannot access your device until 05h30. "Would you like to ask for more time?" If they said yes, it would send an email to us which none of us were checking because we were sleeping, and they would not have been able to get that extra screentime. - So... Yesterday was this beta test, these two flights, their end-of-course test and while I know it's still in a data collection phase, let's first talk about maybe just some of what the airmen's reaction on the back end now after you get through that stressful period, they kinda get into their routine, you have a couple of missteps but that's with any process, but what was the airmen's take on that? Granted, they don't have point of reference because they've never been through BMT, but what did you feel like a general consensus potentially or some of the feedback at least was? - So for the most part our trainees really enjoyed the opportunity to take part and to have that tablet, and that's not just feedback from our trainees, that's feedback form kinda all facets, so our trainees enjoyed the ability to take notes using a keyboard in class. For those that wanted to write, they had the ability to do that, but they also had the ability to type along with our instructors that were teaching those classes. From the instructor's standpoint for our instructors that lead those flights for the last six and a half weeks 'cause they're still in active training, they saw more motivated, more energetic trainees that wanted to spend more time studying, that wanted to spend that time learning this information. And for our instructors that taught in the classroom environment, they saw... They saw trainees that were more attentive and they could reference previous notes at the snap of a finger just by scrolling up in their notepads, and they could identify, "Oh, that instructor just tied that into this lesson, "but this lesson was three days ago." So our instructors that taught those lessons, they saw that and they truly enjoyed that, so I think from all... From all viewpoints, it was viewed as a good thing. Definitely some stress associated with it and a little bit of resistance because "That's not the way it was when I came to the BMT "so why should we make that the way they come through BMT?" But we have to break the mold and we have to break that mentality. - This whole beta test really just loudly speaks to transforming the way we learn and want a general web and Chief Gudgel's priorities for the First Command is aggressively and cost-effectively modernizing education and training, and one of the things that I have talked to in the past with Sergeant Theo about was how there's a lot of benefits that maybe in this beta test you wouldn't necessarily see, but one of the potential examples of having this kind of capability in any training environment including BMT is the potential to update curriculum in real time, where as right now you would have to wait at a bi-annual printing process, so can you kind of talk to maybe some of the things that you guys have potentially envisioned or would hope that the data might prove could be a potential benefit moving forward for BMT? - So as you mentioned, we do have every six months our curriculum update where we go back and we adjust... We adjust fire based of any changes that need to be made. So this would allow us to do that in real time in a web-based arena. Which that is definitely at the forefront of the... bonuses and positive responses we could have from this, but also in addition to that not only can we do that, but our instructors can log in and using an analytics page, find "Hey, this trainee is struggling in this lesson" all the way down to the person, and to the question that they're missing the most and to the concept. So our instructors can hone in on that person and say, "Hey. "I see that you're struggling with X, "let's try to explain that a little differently, "let's look at it from this standpoint." Or, "Well, let's take four steps to the left "and maybe it'll make more sense." And we're able to hone in on that. So not only can we update curriculum, but we can provide a more personalized experience and better prepare our trainees with what they need versus what I think they need by just observing. I can observe and I can hone in on it and say, "Yeah, I need to go engage on this." - And we talked a little bit offline about this, but we talked about innovation and how a lot of times people think about technology and "Wow, that's innovative" but there's a whole process that maybe underlies all of that that you kind of had to be innovative to think about introducing technology into BMT, but you almost had to be innovative sometimes on an hour-to-hour daily type of basis to really make this all work, so I'm curious about what that looked like and how you feel like from a cadre perspective maybe it helped your team think of things in different ways. - So you're absolutely right. Innovation isn't just introducing technology into a field, it's leaning processes, it's being creative in the way that we do things to get the most bang for our buck. So we definitely saw a little bit of that in the early stages here of "Okay, well here's a problem "that our current process doesn't allow us "to work in that way." Well, guess what? That's a roadblock, that doesn't mean we're gonna stop and turn around. It means we're gonna find a way around it. So we had to adjust some of those processes. We had to adjust the way we studied. Our trainees usually study in their dormitories. Well, we had to add an extra step. "Okay, everybody get your backpacks, "we're gonna go up to the classrooms, "we're gonna log into our computers "and we're gonna connect to the internet." Which took a little bit more lead time upfront 'cause we had to get into position, into place to study, but we were more effective once we got in place. We had to adjust our falling out procedures. Usually grab your backpack, which already has your study guide in it and get out the door in the morning. Well now it's grab your backpack, everybody step into the day room, grab your tablet, put it in your backpack. Fall out. And adding an extra step, which in the end made ups more effective, so you gotta give a little to get a little. Gave some time up front, but in the end we were able to be more effective with our time. - So now obviously these trainees soon to graduate, but they're done with the computer portion of this beta test now and now moving forward kind of got a lot of data here to look at as part of a team effort, so what does the way forward look like in terms of this create a partnership? - So what we'll do here and from here on out as the trainees just took their end-of-course test yesterday, so we're still compiling all that data and still sifting through it 'cause we have their scores, but we don't necessarily know what those mean yet. We certainly have to dive deeper into those. What we'll do is we'll take all that data, we'll gather it and we'll compile it into one location and we'll send it out to AETC SAS or the Statistics and Analysis Squadron and Cerego and their engineer at Cerego, or their engineers at Cerego and SAS will work hand-in-hand to provide the data from those analytics and those data points down for those decision makers to decide whether or not we're gonna introduce this into our curriculum, whether we're gonna introduce this into our arena. And then after that we'll brief at all appropriate levels to get all the major players on the same page and then we'll press forward with whether we'll introduce it, we won't, maybe it'll be a blended. That all depends on the data that we see. - Well, it's certainly exciting times. Probably very exciting for you and your team to be kinda on that leaning front edge of the sword so to speak of change or innovation if you will, and transforming the way we learn, so I appreciate your time today. - Absolutely, thank you. (whirring) - What an initiative. Tons of great stuff happening at BMT and I mentioned in with Captain Hoff, but if you haven't been inside the Basic Military Training environment in the wild, it is equal parts chaotic, orderly, inspiring and intimidating in that loud and proud arena. The 321st TRS really welcomed me in, so thank you very much, Captain Hoff. He was juggling about 30 things in his role as a BMT Flight Commander, but he stopped to take time and talk with us here on The Air Force Starts Here, so we certainly appreciate that. And before we close out, I really wanted to add in a couple of people that have been behind the scenes that have made this beta test happen in my research for this podcast. Chief Master Sergeant Juliet Gudgel, our Command Chief at AETC really has been an advocate for this. She understands that airmen need to be inspired and want to be inspired and these are some of the ways they are already learning before they even come to the Air Force, so she has played a major role here. Staff Sergeant Sam Theo from the Headquarters AETC staff, he has done a yeoman's job putting in a ton of work behind the scenes to make this whole thing happen. And of course, special thanks to Captain Hoff and his whole team at BMT. As a reminder, you can follow Air Education and Training Command and the AETC command team via social media on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as well as on the web at www.aetc.af.mil. You can check out the podcast. Again, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Play and the AETC website, so no matter what phone you have, you're covered. Thanks for checking us out on the podcast as we dive into the world of recruiting, training and education. For our entire AETC Public Affairs team, I'm Dan Hawkins, so long. We'll talk to you next time on The Air Force Starts Here. (upbeat music)