Distance learning: understanding Intermediate Level Education: how it differs from the former command and general staff officer course

Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, Oct-Dec, 2003 by Neal Bralley, Jim Danley, Dan French, Chuck Soby, Paul Tiberi

Each of the teaching teams is made up of 10 instructors with differing areas of expertise: 3 are experts in joint and combined operations, 3 are tactics experts, 1 is a leadership expert, 1 is a historian, and 2 are logisticians. The team is responsible for providing all instruction to their group of 64 students throughout the academic year and exercising oversight during the major exercises at the end of the common-core portion of the course and during each block of AOWC.

Each team member also coaches seven or eight students. In this role, they are responsible for mentoring the students, providing feedback, facilitating, counseling, observing, and assisting them with their professional and personal development.

The team-teaching method is a huge change from CGSOC in previous years. Students know the instructors and, more importantly, the instructors know the students and consequently are better prepared to provide meaningful developmental counseling. Keeping the students in small groups of 16 to 18 students allows for the best possible instructor-to-student ratio, and allows the team the opportunity to truly know and better develop the students.

So, what do we "old guys" think of ILE? It's another significant step in the right direction for preparing majors to understand and solve problems in the highly complex operational environment they now face. No longer can they memorize General Defense Plan battle positions at the Fulda Gap and know who and where they will fight.

These field grade officers will be capable of thinking through the most difficult situation, adapting to changes in their operational environment, and ensuring the continued success and freedom of our nation.

We expect it will take time before our officer corps is comfortable with the notion of having no "school solution," but as we have seen in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other hot spots throughout the world, there is no General Defense Plan, and our enemy is constantly changing, thinking, and adapting.

We have no alternative but to provide our nation with leaders who are capable of meeting these challenges--and ILE is another great step in fulfilling this imperative.

Some will continue to reason ILE is too resource-intensive, or too costly in other ways, or necessitates too many changes in the personnel system. Those and other arguments are quite compelling. But, from our foxhole, until we come up with a more cost-effective system to produce the quality officers our nation will depend upon in the foreseeable future, ILE is another step in the right direction.

Endnote

(1.) CGSG Mission Statement. See https:// cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/DAO/ile/ mission.asp.

This article was written by Retired Colenels Neal Bralley, Jim Danley, Dan French, Chuck Soby, and Paul Tiberi--all instructors at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, who will teach ILE this coming academic year. Although this article has been submitted to the Army News Service and the TRADOC News Service, it is also being printed in this issue of the Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin because ILE will affect all mid-career Army officers as well as selected officers of the Army Reserve, Army National Guard, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force.