Creating the International Training Management Web Site: A Corporate University Portal That Shares Best Practices

DISAM Journal, Spring, 2001 by Charles E. Collins

This article traces the development of the International Training Management web site as an instructional resource at the Defense Institute of Security Assistance Management (DISAM). It examines the process that took place as attempts were made to use existing automated systems to enhance the availability of instructional materials for international training management education. It also examines the contribution of the web site to the collection and documentation of international training management best practices and the role of the web site as an instrument of the DISAM corporate university.

For years, at DISAM, we have attempted to provide our overseas security assistance office (SAO) and international military student office (IMSO) course students with printed copies of current training policy messages, articles, key references, and examples of training management best practices. We wanted our international training management students to take with them essential documents and publications that deal with the actual accomplishment of their duties. This resulted in the constant hassle of having to keep on hand a sufficient quantity of printed copies of the most current training publications. Today that is no longer a problem. We now provide access to every known international training management article, message, reference, lesson, exercise, and best practice document. We do this via the internet which makes that information available not only to current and future DISAM students but to all current practitioners who have need of this information in their day to day international training jobs, a nywhere in the world.

The First Use of Automation to Support Training.

We had always provided our international training manager students with copies of essential documents and publications that they could take with them. We had also provided copies of selected publications in binders for use in class. Normally the typical DISAM students would take with them a class notebook, tailored to a specific student's community need. The biggest difficulty in accomplishing this was the constant difficulty of updating the materials, printing them, and having enough on hand for student requirements. And, unless there was a special request from the field, only DISAM students received these materials. Consequently, it was quite natural to turn to automation to help with the provision of these training materials.

The first attempt at providing these materials electronically was to make all international training references, selected exercises, and some presentations available via download from the training library of the security assistance network (SAN). This effort provided the added advantage of making these materials available not only to DISAM students but to other SAN users worldwide. The most significant limitation was that only registered SAN users could have access to the materials. There are many other members of the international military training community who are not active users of the SAN. And, how about the international military community itself (both managers and students) who need information about training in the United States?

The second significant automation effort involved the use of the Defense Acquisition Deskbook system. As Deskbook became the preferred host for all security assistance publications and all international training references were hosted on Deskbook, we began to make some real progress. DISAM students could then be provided a copy of the Deskbook CD-ROM disk with all of their international training references and others needing those references could access them at the Deskbook web site. The limitation, however, was to security assistance training references. Few other published items were added to Deskbook, the process being somewhat involved, in spite of the excellent support efforts of the Deskbook program management office.

What was needed was a process where the DISAM functional expert could research, find materials, and quickly make these materials available via the internet. The solution was obvious: develop and implement an international training management web page hosted on the DISAM web server.

Almost a Web Page.

DISAM had been hosting its own web page since March 1998 and hosting the DSCA web page since November 1999. Our web master is a DISAM faculty member who came to DISAM with significant experience in developing and authoring web pages. With the advent of the DISAM and DSCA web pages, he had quickly put that experience to work and had developed two web pages that were quickly recognized as among the best in DoD. The DISAM intranet web page also quickly evolved and a second DISAM staff member in the library was sent to MS Frontpage training and was then coached by the DISAM web master to develop and maintain that web page. Consequently, the DISAM web master has become much in demand, with his priorities being established many times at DSCA.

At the same time the training faculty was attempting to add selected training management documents to the SAN. There was a certain amount of difficulty in doing this, due to the different formatting of HTML documents created in Netscape Composer versus the Foxpro web developer software. The system manager of the SAN suggested hosting and maintaining the desired documents on the existing DISAM web server and simply linking to them from the SAN. Since MS Frontpage was already being used in the development of the DISAM web page, it only made sense to use Frontpage to create the desired HTML documents.