MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, Ala. -- To streamline cultural competence education for the Total Force at an accelerated rate, the Air Force Culture and Language Center modified its Developing Cultural Competence (DCC) course from a projected completion time of 2.5 hours to 60 minutes while maintaining the course’s academic integrity.
In his introductory message to all Airmen, Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. David Allvin emphasized following through on training transformation with a “continued focus on learner-centric training and education to optimize individual human performance.” He also highlighted the critical importance of leveraging technology in new ways to “not only improve information absorption and application for specific skill sets but also ways to tailor training to individual Airmen and enable them to learn and apply skills more rapidly and effectively throughout their years of service.”
AFCLC met this challenge by utilizing technology to minimize the time an Airman needs to spend in this course while ensuring they receive the same level of cross-cultural competence the course originally provided.
This course modification will save Airmen 1.5 hours of consumption time per completion without sacrificing any educational value. This equates to more than 485,000 hours returned to the active-duty Air Force, following through on the Department of the Air Force’s commitment to provide impactful and relevant education to Airmen in a better, faster, and more accessible format.
The DCC course provides foundational information on basic concepts and practices to enhance cross-cultural competence in preparation for living and working among different cultures.
This course also fulfills requirements within the Cross-Cultural Communication Ready Training Area for the AFFORGEN Ready Airman Training program required for all active-duty Airmen. This modification will allow Airmen to fulfill that requirement quicker while still gaining the essential cultural competence needed at a moment’s notice for success in global operations.
“AFCLC has put the global classroom in every Airman’s pocket with a mobile app to provide education at enterprise scale and a velocity that can outpace the unfolding of events,” AFCLC Director Howard Ward said. “Our modification of the DCC course to provide Airmen with the same level of high-quality cultural education in half the time is just one way AFCLC answers the mail in preparing an expeditionary force with a global mission to succeed when interoperability determines success or failure.”
The DCC course and 10 other Air Force-certified courses are available on AFCLC’s signature Culture Guide app and the Air Force’s myLearning platform. Users complete the course to receive a Certificate of Completion for their learning record.