roger . Yeah . The Air Force has announced the creation of a new Information Operations Technical training school . First man simply must arm our merriment to outfit . Outperform out partner out . Innovate any potential adversary Air Force Basic military training has an updated curriculum with the new focus on readiness and lethality . The First Command , the Air Force starts here . Yeah . Hey everybody welcome into the Air Force starts here and thanks for the subscribe stream or download however you might be listening in if you get a chance to throw some stars or even a review . We certainly would appreciate that as well . My name is Dan Hawkins from the Air Education Training Command public affairs Team and your host for this professional development podcast dedicated to bringing Total Force Big a Airman insight tips tricks and lessons learned from the recruiting training and education world on the pod today and it's a good one . We're talking with Miss Dana Horn from the headquarters E . T . C . A three P . B . Branch . The learning professionals team about the recent launch of their learning professionals , Communities of practice . The learning professionals team led by MS . Horn has a vision of developing highly skilled learning professionals to collaboratively build the winning force for today and tomorrow . And of course advancing force development is one of our commanders top priorities here in E . T . C . And really falls in line with the Department of the Air Force priority of taking care of people and Air Force Chief of Staff . General Brown's action . Order Airman and so today we're going to dive right into the why and how the communities of practice on Mill Sweet have been formed to support the continuous learning of these professionals . It's really interesting to learn how the communities of practice came about after collaboration with others on the A . E . T . C . Staff revealed a gap in regards to what was being provided internally for people to connect with each other share and discuss their work and and really have a conversation around the various tools systems and processes that were available to them or just generally discussed topics and trends in the field . So it really came about after a needs analysis was conducted . And another interesting aspect that we're going to talk about is how the learning professionals , content that's out there on Mill Sweden . The communities of practice aren't just for personnel and A . T . C . But across the Air Force as a good deal of training and education is done by the force at large . So let's get to it , away we go . Episode number 58 of the Air Force starts here , launches right now . Dana tell us a little bit about yourself . Well my name is Dana Horn and uh I have been in with A T . C . I've been working for A . T . C . For about 20 years And I've been up here at headquarters since 2016 , I was a former school teacher so my degree , my actual degree is in biology and I have a masters in counseling and education and so as a as a moment of block I was able to get an internship into the Air Force and I've been rocking and rolling ever since . I love the Air Force and I just love what I'm doing today . It's an amazing job I get to do right now , nothing like being in A . T . C . And you have a really cool job with this new learning professionals branch . You're actually helping anybody in the education and training world . Can you kind of talk about what A . Three B uh P . Does and what the learning professionals branch is this branch that alerting professional branch was stood up a couple of years ago and it is designed , its sole purpose is to support military and civilian learning professionals and it's not just within certain commands , this is across the Air Force . So our goal is to help up skill them enhance them , make sure they're getting the competencies that they need and that they have the learning opportunities available to them so they can build their own culture of learning within their organization . Our main goal is to provide the diverse learning opportunities , programs , platforms and those capabilities so that it supports all of their development from start to finish . So we have a lot of programs that were that were working on um our communities of practice is our main one that we're going to talk about today as we keep moving forward , we'll keep exploring capabilities and opportunities to help continually up skill are learning professionals and this really fits right in line with General Brown's Action Order of Airman 10 , General Webs advancing Force development . So many touch points with Air Force strategic priorities that the learning professionals branch help support and you mentioned the communities of practice and that is a huge undertaking for your branch . Can you just briefly outline what the communities of practice is and what it's designed to do for learning professionals , the communities of practice are there to support learning professionals across the Air Force ? It's not designed with anyone a Fc or career series in mind . It's designed for the whole Air Force since it's designed on a platform called Mill Suite which has been around for over a decade , all your sisters services can come in and share and interact with each other and network in that environment . So last year ATCA nine did a study and they basically created a gap analysis . So they looked at all the learning professionals and looked across the spectrum of their capabilities and realized that there were a lot of gaps in what they knew and could do . And so we have taken those the output from that study to help kind of fine tune where we need to go and things we need to do to help our learning professionals to provide them an environment where they feel comfortable learning and interacting with others , asking questions , all of those types of things . And then when we went into mill Sweet , we also looked at past communities . So there have been several past communities that you can find out there that it kind of languished . So we don't want that to happen to ours . We have a dedicated person and dedicated leads for each community to make sure the community stay up to date that they stay interactive and that there's somebody always there that people can reach out to and that's so important in this day and age especially , I mean just even thinking over the last year and a half to two years now with the covid 19 pandemic and a lot of us now sometimes working remotely and so having that social interaction aspect to communities such as this may be , hence the name communities of practice , but talk about that and how much that interaction in a collaborative way that that interaction help . Well a lot of times , you know when we're sitting in school houses or we're sitting in various environments and we need to know something sometimes , especially when you're looking at the learning environment , people just don't know where to go to ask a question and sometimes they'll move to social media and you may get all sorts of responses there but over in our communities of practice because we have , we have been set up by topic following the addie model which is analyze design , develop , implement and evaluate . We've structured it along those lines so that people can easily go in find their community that they need to ask a question of and interact and get an answer and the answer may be multi pronged depending on who responds . It could be somebody from across the globe , another service within the Air Force but to have that that broad type communication is really important . That that's how we learn and that's how we expand our knowledge . It seems pretty exciting when I kind of poked around and saw all the different avenues that people could go to get help . I think it's an interesting point that you brought up and you talked about it uh kind of at the beginning but identifying leaders that that weren't necessarily on the A . T . C . Team , what do you think the value is in people who aren't necessarily in A . T . C . Being able to contribute to the communities of practice ? It's really critical because you know your goal is is to help enhance and improve and build everybody's knowledge and skill set . Yeah because we we are the humans that we are we learn every day every day . It's ongoing and so we need people who are new to the learning environment along with your seasoned professionals to interact together because that corporate knowledge from the seasoned professionals will help build up the que esa es of the new person that's coming in . Um You know the Air Force is great at training and educating within an fc or a career series to build those que ESAs and when they come into a learning environment , the language is a little different . The processes are different . The way you interact with people could even be a little bit different . So it's important to have that cross talk , which is what our cops do . They really help build a safe space for anybody coming into those environments that needs somebody to talk to that needs easily accessible content because we've already curated a lot of the content in these environments so they can easily quickly learn not only from what's on the page when they come into it , but also interacting with others . You've talked about Mill Sweet and Mill Sweet , not necessarily a new thing , but what was it about ? Mill Sweet that spoke to the learning professionals branches Hey , this is the place where we need to host the communities of practice . It is such a dynamic environment and I think on the surface when you , when you look at it , you don't realize just how expansive it is . So it not only has the capability to to have interaction with others , but to host content . It has a Youtube like capability . It has polling and surveys in question and answers . We can put our , our podcasts on there as well . It can host any type of content and what we really like is that it was open to all the services . So anything we do in our environment or anything a sister service does we can interact with each other so as they build their communities and we have ours or if others develop communities that help support learners in any way . For example , a three K has a growth mindset community , which is really an awesome space . So we connect with them through our cop and so we build this interconnected web of people supporting learning and the learning environment . One of the things that a lot of times , especially when you start talking about collaborative tools , a question that comes up is , but I have to use my cat card , um what was the thought process there when it came to being on a platform that requires cac access . So we're really glad that Mill Sweet and our communities of practice have CAC access because it gives all of the learning professionals a safe space to discuss their projects . Unlike some of the social media facebook linked in where a lot of people can see what you're saying uh in a public venue here they can come in and talk about their projects that they may not be able to discuss anywhere else . So I mean obviously a lot of thought and a lot of work going into Mill Sweet and I know it's ongoing . Um but what else are you guys looking at using mil suite for beyond the communities of practice ? So as we as we keep learning more and more about mill Sweet because we're also new users , since we set these up just in september um we hope to create how to videos . We also hope to have podcast seasons . So we will start having our own podcast . We're starting with our site leaders . So every every community has a site leader and we'll start with them interviewing them dr Canada is going to do a live chat in december and we're hoping that these these many events will again support things that people want to know and are seeking . Um well one of the things I really thought was a pretty cool idea and I don't know how far along it is , but is the project hub . Tell us about that sounds cool . So we love our project tub , we haven't advertised it a lot yet , but that will be coming . So our project hub is a great way to crowdsource development for small projects right now . So we have a couple of projects on their on their currently just so we could test it out and kind of get some experience in it and anybody can come in post a project , they just have to fill out a simple form and it will show up in our space and then others can come in and say , you know what I would really like to take on that project because it will help me work with that organization . It will help build up my skills in development whether it's software tools or just broadening their depth of knowledge and so it helps create this interactive network of let me help you and then you can help me and and hopefully get those small projects done that maybe people don't have the bandwidth for , you know , um and so we're going to expand that even a little bit beyond that hub in that uh we usa jobs have has an open opportunity capability there and so we'll be linking that with our project hub in hopes that even we can expand that capability even just outside of the Air Force . It sounds like you guys are really busy , but as I looked through all the information that you sent me and we talked a little bit about , there's a lot of cool events and even though it's not necessarily the communities of practice , it is learning professionals based . Tell us about the upcoming learning professional consortium for 2022 because you guys are like just totally flipping that thing upside down and and all around , tell us about it . We are , we are so our consortium for 2022 is going to be very different than our past ones . So instead of having a three day , a solid three day event where everybody would probably get zoom fatigue after that kind of time . Our attendees last year requested that we do three separate events . So what we've done is spread out the consortium over , it's still three days , but it's spread out over three different months . So we have a day of february april and june where we will have these full day events to better to better accommodate our listeners and our attendees and we will record those as well . So even if people register and can't attend , they can always go to our website after and then watch at their own leisure because we will break those up into various sessions so you can actually fine tune which you want to learn from those . Yeah , that that sounds really exciting . I know in the last few years , um a lot of uh events have had to shift to that online environment and be a little more dynamic in that regards . Um so pretty exciting that you guys have made that shift as well . Another thing that I found really so cool is , you know , it's not just , hey , here's Mil Sweet and a bunch of resources that you can go to , but there's also some some civilian development coming um in terms of a CFE TP for the 17 50 series that's going to help develop instructors . Absolute . So are 1750 population . They do a lot of different jobs , everything from evaluation to development design policy , you name it . They are scattered throughout the air force doing a lot of different exciting things . So we have created a civilian education and training plan , a cFE TP and it's the first competency based publication that we've done , it's on its way to be published . So we're really excited about that . And along with that we've developed really authentic assessments so that that way supervisors have all the tools readily at their hand to evaluate their staff and to help them develop areas that may be weak and identify the areas where they have a lot of knowledge and skill . So we have linked that up with Skillsoft . So on the Air Force portal there is an E learning platform and it's managed by Skillsoft . So what we've done is we've taken that CFE TP and linked it to skill soft and so it's organized and structured exactly the way the CFE TP is with the various proficiency levels from basic to expert and then people can go in and if you're at a basic level you can learn at that level . If you're in an advanced level you can you have resources there for you and we're just now starting to upload E learning assessments on there . So right now our assessments are in a pdf format and we're getting ready to validate our assessments here shortly . And once we do that we will not only have them in a pdF form but we'll also have them on the E learning site . So supervisors and staff can actually go in there and very easily walk through these modules and assess themselves assess their staff . However that may be and uh and it will capture that in that you're learning site . Now we'll explore other platforms as well as we move forward , trying to find the best fit for all the capabilities we want to employ . But this is a great start . And Skillsoft is moving to the Presidio platform so it will actually offer more capabilities and we should see that Hit hit Air Force portal maybe in the summer of 2022 , I think so somewhere on there , but we will , we will keep building this uh these references and these learning opportunities for the C F P p p . I thought you were gonna say you're going to keep building the boat while it floats down the river because you guys are juggling a lot of plates up in the air right now . So really exciting stuff . I know you're working on an athlete platform called evolve , which is a social learning construct where anyone can upload content and create development path . So that's exciting . Uh and you guys still do kind of real time stuff with your monthly learning professionals , Q and a speaker series . That's really awesome . Um uh and obviously of course this , this big initiative of the communities of practice , but you know , where where else can people go right now to get information about the learning professionals . I know you have your own website and facebook page . We do . We absolutely do . So the best place to get started is our website and you can go to www learning professionals dot af dot mil . And we have all of our capabilities linked in there . We also have a professional facebook page that's open to the public , the public and we have a private facebook group and if you're familiar with facebook , you can probably find those fairly easily with a quick search in the search bar . Um on mill . Sweet . It's a simple search . You can look for us there and you , we should pop up right away if you type in learning professionals and on the evolved platform , this developed platform , If you go into the learning hugs , you'll see a big icon there that says Air Force Learning professionals . You can't miss us . That's good branding , you can't if they can't miss you . It's good branding , dana . That's what I always like to say , being a public affairs guy anyway , so I really want to thank you for your time today , this is great stuff and we look forward to continuing to stay in touch and and do more podcasts uh to tell people about all the exciting things that you guys are doing in the learning professionals branch , Thank you so much Dana . I really appreciate your time and energy today . We're really excited about our communities of practice . We invite everybody to come in , spend some time figuring out the capabilities and if anybody would like us to help their organization . We are more than willing to come and meet with them and do a walk through and show them all the capabilities and all the things that they can also do in that environment . Good stuff and can't wait to see what 2022 holds because there's a lot of good stuff happening . There is absolutely , we , we have a lot of projects that we will start in 2022 that will help continuously building that interconnected web of capabilities for our learning professionals , tons of great information there as our headquarters E T C learning professionals team continue to advance force development not only here in the first command but across the Air Force and we'll definitely be checking in with them on their upcoming projects as well as the upcoming 2022 learning professionals consortium as well . Special thanks to Miss Dana Horn . Taking time out of an always busy schedule to talk with us about the communities of practice on mill sweet for the Air Force learning professionals . As a reminder you can follow Air education and Training command and the E T C command team on facebook twitter and instagram and we also are on linkedin under Air education and Training command for the latest E T C news on the web . Check us out at www dot e T C dot af dot mil . Thanks for tuning in to the podcast as we dive into the world of recruiting training and education our entire e T C public affairs team . I'm dan Hawkins . So long we'll talk to you next time on the Air Force starts here .