I'm still trying to digest the huge amount of advice I have received
regarding the classroom portion of the CRM program for AETC instructor and
evaluator pilots in the T-37, T-38, and T-1 (not students, they have their
own class). Just a reminder, the program is a three pronged approach. The
first is an annual classroom facilitated session, about an hour. The
second is monthly continuation training, facilitated sessions on a single
monthly CRM topic, arranged to keep the program fresh in the instructor's
minds. And the third, 4 Emergency Procedure/CRM Simulator Sorties spread
out over the year. The primary goal being to send the instructor to the
student with the skills to brief/debrief/utilize CRM in the everyday
environment.
With that in mind I want to put forth some questions regarding some of the
advice I have gotten from previous mail on this site. Vince Mancuso wrote
in regard to MOST/LOFT training: "The biggest challenge in the industry is
identifying specific management skill objectives for skill training. Many
have identified the major categorizations that they want to train (from AFI
36-2243 -- decision making, situational awareness, group dynamics,
effective communications, workload management, stress awareness and
management, mission planning, review and critique, and human performance)
but they have not stated the position specific desired learning
objectives/expectations within each of these categories."
My question being, can we (based on Vince Mancuso's comment, "be careful
about mixing concepts, outcomes, and skills. Group Dynamics is a
concept...Situational Awareness is an outcome. The categorization should
only be skills -- identifyable action verbs --. If it is not a skill then
it doesn't belong in CRM training.) provide only skill training in the
annual classroom so it is done thoroughly rather than give a vocabulary
lesson on the categorizations, which is so common in recurrent CRM
training.
>From Vince's advice I thought about skills versus outcomes and concepts.
Here's what I came up with (based on the 8 categories in AFI 36-2243)
under the categorization of skills: Effective Communications, Risk
Management and Decision making, Workload Management, Stress Awareness and
Management, and finally Mission Planning, Review and Critique. Under the
concepts and outcomes were Group Dynamics, Human Performance, and
Situational Awareness. Now before I cause a huge debate on the
categorizations keep in mind I am just trying out an idea here, of which
the categorizations are not my primary point of this letter.
Given the fact that I have only an hour to present the annual class
(because of poor manning levels and the resulting time crunch in graduating
student pilots) I want to see what you think of just addressing the skills
in the annual classroom session. I think this would give the opportunity
to adequately address the skills portion, provide time to address
instruction techniques for the one on one nature of the instructor student
relationship i.e. prebrief/debrief/critique, and it would dovetail nicely
into the MOST/LOFT simulator sorties which are skill intensive.
As for the other categories that are concepts and outcomes, they would be
addressed via topics in the monthly (one topic a month = 12 topics over the
year) facilitated sessions. The skills subjects would also be addressed
via this forum as a review and reinforcement over the course of the year.
The one hour concept was critiqued by many as not being enough time. I
hadn't brought to light the monthly sessions and LOFT/MOST sorties and now
my question to you is by utilizing the three pronged approach do you think
we will keep everyone proficient?
Thanks,
Capt Andy Newman
AETC CRM at Large