MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, Ala -- Air University’s Squadron Officer College has partnered with Columbia University to transform its education approaches to maximize student performance in a digital world.
Nineteen members of AU faculty, 14 from SOC, attended a five-day seminar recently at the New York City school. The seminar included lectures, case studies, discussion on the factors associated with curricular design and instruction for developing digital literacy, and mentoring sessions on how Air University faculty can design and structure future education.
The seminar was be comprised of five education priorities: advanced teaching techniques, international security studies, leadership models, strategic communication inside and outside the organization and digital literacy.
“We focused on how to be better instructors and to think about technology in smart ways,” said Hawkins-Scribner. “Deeper collaborations impact the practices and often effect the application of these practices, and result in impactful changes in what we do. Columbia has several professors who are global experts on digital literacy, so we wanted to make sure our partnership was with the top experts.”
Effects are being felt immediately as faulty are implementing the strategies they learned at Columbia. Platforms that enable multiple forms of education intake have birthed, along with virtual reality technology used for leadership development.
“When we look at Air University, it is clearly an elite institution with regards to leadership and education on airpower employment and strategy,” said Maj. Dwayne Clark, a SOC faculty member who completed the training at Columbia. “Elite institutions partner with other elite institutions to bolster their effectiveness. Our goal in this institution is to impact officers, both faculty and students, early in their careers to empower them to leader through change. We can leverage our partnership with Columbia to help us accomplish this. For example, there were 14 SOC instructors who attended Columbia University, and in less than a month later, we are implementing nine major initiatives that were inspired by this program.”
The school is truly seeing transformational effects, said Hawkins-Scribner.
“This has energized faculty and staff, and it’s truly transformational,” she said. “I think there is a hunger that makes people ask, ‘Where can we go to learn?’ Maybe it’s right here, and then there are times we need to collaborate with like-minded people to help inspire and glean insights so we can get to where we couldn’t get before.”
The partnership between the two institutions is an ongoing relationship with plans for further collaboration.