this system is everything that force development is building , its airmen centric , its mission focused , its competency based , its layering in all of these great factors that a bunch of very smart people dreamt up about the future of education and training . There's probably no other training advancement that's going to have as big an impact as this . First man simply must arm our airmen to outplay outperform out partner out , innovate any potential adversary . The first command the Air Force starts here . Hello and thank you for tuning into the Air Force starts your podcast . My name is Miriam thurber and I'm excited to host this episode on tech training transformation . If you tuned in before you know that in each episode we provide tips tricks and lessons from our talented educators , trainers and leaders and today I have the honour of speaking with Dr Major Jesse johnson , commander of debt 23 Tech Sergeant Casey Makowski who is a debt 23 curriculum engineer and a C 1 30 J subject matter expert . Before we bring in our guests , let's chat for a minute about T3 or tech training transformation At 80 C . We're always pushing the envelope to make sure we're offering the highest quality education and training in the world . It was obvious that training needed to change and transition from a traditional lecture based teaching to take advantage of an era of technology . The 23 teams set up to study how this generation learns best and then they built a tech training system that's not only mission focused and competency based , but that personally improves training for individual airman . After researching T three officials have created an airman centric maintenance training model that incorporates virtual reality , augmented reality and artificial intelligence . There's so much more to it . And if you would like to dive in deep , we have an article out on a e t c dot af dot know that we would love for you to read . But now that , you know the basics , let's jump in with our experts . Thank you so much for joining us today , Major Jesse Johnson , thanks for having us , really appreciate the opportunity to share our work . And we also have Tech Sergeant Casey Mccall Key here . Thank you so much for being here . Thank you for having me . So , we're obviously going to dive into a lot about T three today . And so I wanted to just start off for you , Major johnson asking , how does airman centric training help improve our total force . It allows us to capitalize on the full potential of every airman and allow them to function inside the mission the best way that they fit versus trying to , to for lack of better way to put it the square peg in a round hole , right ? We want the airmen to utilize the talents and skills they have that are natural and innate to them and bring them to the fight . So we have to shift our focus to being able to provide that airmen the best possible way to learn uh so that they understand the material and we can advance our education goals faster . Around the time that society switched over to mobile technology between 2007 and 2009 , there was a fundamental shift in the way information is delivered to people in general . And then when we look backwards at the generations that are going through school , uh we see that they're being delivered educational content in in live format . So the student in , in a high school classroom , if they don't believe what their instructors telling them , they can google and they could do their own research and in this fundamental shift in how students are learning and really , again , how they access information is going to change the future of how we , how we fight wars . That's awesome . You have strengthened the individual so everyone is stronger . So for you , tech sergeant kowalski , we know that teamwork is a really big part of maintenance training and flight line work . So how does teeth this program foster that kind of teamwork , Even though it's tailored to the individual airman . What we saw was as airmen developed themselves and went through the program by themselves , they were able to come out of the system and then work together as a team to help those who were maybe struggling in the same areas that they succeeded in going back to your point where the individual is better as a team . If you try and force airman to fit into a box , you'll only be able to work inside that box you force them into and every airman brings individuality to a team and in the individuality allows the strength to come through . And how does this training differentiate from the training that you went through as maintaining yourself ? It has a different emphasis when when I came through and it was the same for many decades before I came through . You know , you came and you sat into a class and you learn from power points and you just kind of uh went through modular early , right ? You learned one thing , you took a test on it and you move to the next thing and then at the very end , you try and get tested on everything that you learned over however long your tech school was and um when that , that , that used to work and it still produces quality Aramin . However airman now need to learn in context to the mission . And so what are training does has it allows them to learn in the exact way that they will perform when they get to their first duty station and part of learning is making mistakes and growing . So the old system , you know , you take a test , you make a mistake , you get that question wrong , Major johnson . And then obviously you can chime into when an airman does something wrong . How do they know the first and most important part of that is we don't pretend to to say that the old system uh , is bad . We just say that it's , it's not going to function in the future . But there are key aspects of that old system that are really , really critical . So hands on demonstration is probably the prime one . So we could do as much training as we want in a virtual world , augmented world , any sort of digital multimedia content . But at the end of the day , there's nothing that's gonna break that uh senior technician overseeing and training the apprentice level technician . So I would never want to take that away . The other part of it is we recognize that failure piece is really important , fundamentally . Humans learn through failure . So we put inside of our system , for example , one of the ways in our system that if you clip safety wired , the screen goes red , like you just got safety wire in the eye if you hadn't put your safety glasses on . So we build in what we call Consequential Learning that provides feedback , direct and immediate feedback to the student when they fail , you practice how you play , right ? So if you if you practice you know cautiously , you'll play cautiously . If you practice correctly , then you'll play correct . And as we go into our next major project , as it aligns around agile combat employment , multi capable human . Uh , we're taking that consequential learning to the next step . So there's in that particular uh series , there's three different levels to the course . First level is home station where it's just basic classroom type things that are presented digitally and there is very little consequence to failure . The second level , we call the exercise level where mimics the uh , the contingency exercise at a wing . And if a student makes fails in that environment , uh , the non player character who is intelligent because of the artificial intelligence built into the system comes over and undresses with the airmen . Hey , you made this mistake , these are your consequences and it may kick them back to the training in the first level . Finally , when you get to the third level , we call the deployment level . If they fail at any zero tolerance for failure in that level . If they fail at any part of their training and that their decertified in the system and have to go all the way back to block one and start the training again . So that consequential learning , we allow for the mistakes , but we also increase the severity of um sort of discipline . If they failed to meet the benchmark , you'll see that when you go to an exercise , a real life exercise , not our training environment , but a real life exercise . The consequences are the same . You know , when , when you make a mistake , the severity of consequence has increased because right now you're practicing to deploy , you're showing your skills whether you're ready or not . And then when you deploy , there's little to no room for mistakes because right now you're , you're trying to make the mission happen . And so if we tailor our training to meet that requirement , they will get it in their brain and build those mental models to understand like , hey , this is how it really is . They can spend as much time in each one of those levels as they , they can repeat the same objective a dozen times if if it's what they need to get their personal proficiency because again , we're reaching individual airmen that airman centric focus so that we know when they walk out of their training environment and A . T . C . Stamps um is qualified to do the mission . We feel confident that they have met every benchmark we can put out there . That's fantastic . It means the quality there when coming out of this program is one that has learned on their own pace how to do their job well . And then Ben , as you said , stamped and certified , can you speak a little bit more to quality there ? That's coming out of this program From our perspective at T . Three equality element looks like an individual that can do every part of their job with as little supervision as possible to the highest degree of efficiency and proficiency as possible . So how do we go back and replicate that and build that into the school houses so that we are producing a quality airman in our five and seven levels who are dependent more and more on quality airmen coming out at sea , Know exactly what they're getting . The correlation of academics doesn't necessarily transfer to on the job execution , focusing less on . Did you get a 99 on every test and more on ? Did you walk out of there demonstrating your skills like hands on competency based demonstration of your skill as a student , you're gonna , you're gonna know the quality that you're getting . Once you get out to the actual operational air force from school or from tech school , you're going to see how it all relates . People should be excited to , to just be able to even experience it because they're gonna , they're gonna know the difference , they're gonna see the difference . And even operational Air men right now who are receiving these technical students , they should be extremely excited to get capable airmen out of tech school first day . And from the instructor perspective , it's going to be a lot less of grading these tests and a lot more of mentoring . How can instructors take full advantage of this program that you guys are producing . Our Air Force is doing a great job , is shifting the mindset in the past couple of years . They have re imagine how they would value force generators and this is just part of that valuing first generation . So we want to bring the best of the best from the field . If you've demonstrated that same proficiency , I just spoke about from , from your tech school all the way into your seven level experience and you prove an exceptional quality of work . That's the person we want to bring back into the school house to teach our airmen to replicate themselves , be the seven level , come and oversee direct coach mentor . So less authority , authoritative directive education and more coaching mentor . More to mimic the supervisor , supervisor role that they're going to experience in the fly line . Our system kind of enables that as one student struggles if it's only one in the class , while the rest of them are exceeding expectations and that instructor can take that one on one approach , right ? And that's , that's , that's what kind of pulls him out of the instructor realm and put them more as a seven level . Because when you're , when you're operating on the flight line , if you have , you know , you know , four or 53 levels , working with you and you as a seven level or managing these three levels , you see that three of them are operating fantastically , but one is kind of struggling as a seven level , you mentor that one person to catch them up . So the schoolhouse should be the same as opposed to pushing everyone through at once . And if one struggles , everyone else has to be held back and then vice versa , if , if he's struggling and everyone else is succeeding and you kinda have to push him forward in hopes that he makes it and then , you know , the variable equality as they get to the fly line is too great there . We need to , you know , hone in on that . I think the individual approach , you know exactly what you're getting with each individual student , that's sort of the flip side of that airman centric to Right , so now the instructor has the ability to pay attention directly to one student at a time based on individual performance . That's a great point . Which is really empowering to the instructor instead of worrying about my public speaking well enough , do I have a great enough lesson plan instead they can do their job well and really be there for the students . So kind of on the flip side of that , then how can students make the most of this program ? I think students can make the most of it if they is they truly grasp the analytic side of things . So with a dark system of data analytics and reporting platform , uh they get they gather all the information and analytics on their performance . And if there's anywhere that they're lacking , they have the opportunity to , like major johnson said , continue to go in and do that one lesson over and over and over and over again if they wanted to in today's generations , it's really achievement based . Like everything they do . There is some sort of achievement tied to it . I mean look at video games and so what we've done with our system is we've we've tied achievements to , we've allowed them to see star based um performance . So if they do poorly they get one star , they do mediocre , they get to and if they excel , they get three . And one thing that we really saw where students were going back and saying , hey , you know , I got one star on this , I'm gonna go back and do it again and again and again . And as an instructor , you can see , um , each time they've gone through , how long they spend . Each one , their scores on each test that they took , um , all of that . And the students can see it to , the students can go back and they can review the quiz it , they just took inside the system how well they performed , which questions they got wrong . They can look at the actual uh , test question , then go back to the study guys and review it and then that in itself gives them different learning modality . So if they learn better reading of books and they have the opportunity to do that as well something . And I also add , yeah , The system builds out 24 7 access to content , so what we have to understand and our profession in the military is that our responsibility is never stopped and that includes training . So to get to the proficiency level that we need uh in our defense system , uh we need airmen who are who are stepping out and taking additional time and training and spending uh an extra amount of time and off duty hours inside of a system trying to get to that next level of understanding or get , maybe they take the the course and they get the one star while they're in class , but then they go home and they work for the rest of the evening until they get that third star because it matters to them and what they don't recognize , what I hope they take from that is um it matters to the Air Force . Uh it matters that we know that coming out of the , the doors of eight UTC , you're as confident and proficient as we can possibly make you . And so what airman can do to be successful in system is to put as much effort into it as possible . And then what they gain out of it is world class training that's not being developed or presented anywhere else . Because with a traditional learning model , a student can kind of scrape by with mediocre work , still compete and then they just kind of , you know , so , so throughout the rest of their career , this really allows every person to take full advantage , really empower themselves and then be really competitive in their field . Um specifically for you , tech sergeant Mcclosky , as someone in this career field , how excited does it make you to work alongside or supervised people who have gone through this program versus maybe people who haven't . So that's a very good question . As we , as we , you know , allow students to go through the system back in august last year , you just saw this light in them and they , and a lot of them had this competitiveness about them where they were , they were talking more with each other . They were competing against each other . They were trying to do better . And it gave me like a , a sense of accomplishment because I knew that when they get to their first duty station , these guys will had the chance of being ready . They were ready to perform these tasks and they showed it through the hands on demonstration , not through the VR , but through the hands on demonstration . So in the event that I go back to a fly line and I worked the fly line , which I would love because I love my job . I would be honored to have these students working under me , your recruiting the best of the best and then you're keeping them at the top of their game for the rest of their career , which is revolutionary . I think I think they need to understand that training itself is not just trying to get through it to get that certification training itself as kind of like a lifestyle , right ? And so you you have to maintain good quality training so you can maintain that good quality performance . And traditionally speaking , we haven't provided that opportunity to air . So our duty day standard class that is eight hours of power point . Then you go home and you might have some homework that that presents very little opportunity and really poor construct for students to want to continue that lifelong learning methodology , right ? So we want to be able to open this system up so it's accessible to the airmen no matter where they're at , no matter what they're doing . And I'll , you know , I see a grand vision in the future where Where I'm no longer chunking courses the way that we do , where like you go through your tech school and then you wait 5-7 years and you go through this other school . Anyway . Uh , let's just open the aptitude of everybody can get in and do whatever training they want . And your only limit to training availability is your ambition and your drive to learn and that passion to be that lifelong learner . So we want , we want to give that capability over two airmen and it just hasn't really existed traditionally up to this point . So our methodology is everything . If you're building training , we want to put it inside the ecosystem and present those students with as many opportunities to gain training experience as possible and let them select their own path . We never want to limit , we never want to stifle innovation cells from doing things that they're doing . We want to give them an avenue so that when they get to the end of their contract they don't have the question now what the answer is . Well now we send it over to tech training transformation and they plug it into the ecosystem and it's scalable across the entire Air Force . And so what we get is spark cells at the wing are actually creating training that can go into the ecosystem . You can have A T . C . Credentialing , take a look at it and go , hey this is really great training . It meets all of our box checks certified 80 C . Course and now I can teach that course developed at the wing level in the classroom in A . E . T . C . Because it's that good . So were scaling our training development across the entire Air Force building this great big mesh network of training that leverages the best of all of our seven levels across the Air Force . Let's say someone's creating curriculum where there's a training out there . How can they partner with T . Three ? First thing I need to do is give us a call . We're not say is before you start any project that goes down the path of education and training . Give us a call and we'll tell you how to make sure that what you're building on the backside can be delivered inside the Air Force in terms of licensing and api requirements and things like that . And then once you build your technology , we will connect you into the delivery analysis and reporting platform and you're instantly scaled across the Air Force . It's not a competition of yours or ours . It's all of ours for the better of our future . Airmen , thousands , anything you would like to add that we haven't touched on yet . I think it's really important for folks in A . T . C . And the Air Force and really the D . O . D . At large to understand that our program is a recognition by our senior leaders that the future of warfare is changing and it's really important that we adapt to it uh and change as well . So the A . T . C . Commander uh previous to the current actually set us aside and put invested in this technology and invested in this future . So we are directly in the E . T . C . Headquarters . We are supported by and and funded by the general officers in their education training come in who see this as a future capability . That is a requirement to match that near pier contender in the futures . And in the next uh , great power competition , we're gonna be up against competitors who have the same technological advantages that we do because the information is so prevalent , there are no secrets in innovation anymore . So it's so prevalent . So it's reasonable to say that the next great power competition is going to involve some sort of attempt to limit access to information . So we we should be excited that our general officers are putting their money where their mouth , Is there actually investing in future technologies to make sure we remain competitive on a global scale . In in closing my additional thoughts , uh , there's there's a really awesome team that's kind of develop this . I know I'm I'm the one sitting at the table . But um , a lot of great minds that came from the fields are here to develop this . Want to recognize some names that aren't kevin Lassen texts aren't Curtis Klosterman , Mass aren't Dustin smith mass aren't Jason Farrell staffs aren't Renee , Scharff texts are Andrew tongue , there's obviously more names but those are the ones that are on my mind and they did an amazing job . We worked really hard over the past few . We'll just continue developing for the future . Thank you both so much for your time and thank you listeners for joining us listeners be on the lookout for technical training transformation coming to your Air Force specialty . And if you are developing training courses or curriculum for any field please reach out to T . Three . They're working on some really exciting global stuff that's gonna span A . T . C . And they would love to collaborate with you . And of course if you have more questions about T . Three please connect with us on social media . Air education and Training . Command is on facebook instagram and twitter and we would love to chat more about T . Three . Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast and catch up on the latest news from around the command at a t c dot af dot mil . And of course if you have a topic that you'd like us to address in a future episode please reach out and let us know from our entire 80 C public affairs team . Thank you for joining us again . I'm Miriam thurber and I'll see you next time on the Air Force starts here podcast .