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Dr. Wendy Walsh, Air Education and Training Command’s chief learning officer, provides opening remarks for the third Department of the Air Force Learning Symposium, held at the Radius Center in San Antonio April 16-18. Walsh has a nine-year strategy that cycles three topic areas three times each: ecosystem mapping (human-centered), storytelling (mission-focused) and competencies (competency-based). About 85 members from across the Department of the Air Force were in attendance for the three-day event. (U.S. Air Force Photo by Jonathan R. Mallard)

Dr. Wendy D. Walsh, Ed.D.

Dr. Wendy D. Walsh is the Chief Learning Officer, Air Education and Training Command, Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas. She is responsible for providing leadership, support and technical direction to enable an Air Force culture of learning. Dr. Walsh connects learning professionals to collectively build, share, and sustain an accessible, meaningful continuum of learning for Airmen.

Preparing for flight

Dr. Wendy Walsh, the chief learning officer of Air Education & Training Command, pre-briefs for her incentive flight in the T-1A Jayhawk at Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma, Feb. 22. Walsh's visit included tours that gave her a first-hand experience of how Vance trains world-class pilots. (U.S. Air Force photo/ 2nd Lt. Christopher Guerra)

Air Education and Training Command Learning Symposium

Graphic illustrator Tiiwon Siaway (center) displays her work at the Air Education and Training Command Learning Symposium, Aug. 24, 2023. Standing with Siaway are Marcus Carrion (left), AETC symposium facilitator and co-chair, and Dr. Wendy Walsh (right), AETC chief learning officer. The symposium was held Aug. 22-24 at Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., with the last day being held at the Kress building in downtown Montgomery, Ala. The symposium provided the more than 60 learning professionals from across the Department of the Air Force a ‘sharing space’ to learn from and hear about each other’s stories and successes, with the goal of transforming the way Airmen and Guardians learn. Several graphic illustrators at the symposium helped capture the dialogue amongst attendees as another medium to tell their stories. (U.S. Air Force photos by Sean Ross)

AETC chief learning officer visits Goodfellow

Dr. Wendy Walsh, Air Education and Training Command chief learning officer, listens to a brief at Joint All Domain Exercise, Forward Operations Readiness Generation Exercise, Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas, Aug. 8, 2023. JADE FORGE is the newest initiative to the 17th Training Wing to enhance training for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance Airmen and joint partners. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Sarah Williams)

AETC chief learning officer visits Goodfellow

Dr. Wendy Walsh, Air Education and Training Command chief learning officer, gives a thumbs up at the Louis F. Garland Department of Defense Fire Academy, Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas, Aug. 8, 2023. The Louis F. Garland DoD Fire Academy is the largest fire training facility in the world and graduates over 1,400 joint service students each year. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Sarah Williams)

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Dr. Wendy Walsh, Air Education and Training Command chief learning officer, gives opening remarks on the importance of innovation and collaboration during the Air Education and Training Command Innovation Day of FORCECON 2022 at Tech Port San Antonio, Texas, May 24, 2022. FORCECON 2022 is an interactive industry and academia collider event where participants have the opportunity to connect with industry and small business advisors.(U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Keith James)

AETC’s chief learning officer visits SWTW, observes human performance training

U.S. Air Force Col George Buse (left), Special Warfare Human Performance Support Group commander, briefs Dr. Wendy Walsh (right), Air Education and Training Command chief learning officer, on how members of the Special Warfare Training Wing leverage cutting-edge human performance technology at the SWTW interim Human Performance Training Center at Joint Base San Antonio-Chapman Training Annex, Texas, April 5, 2022. Walsh and her team participated in an immersion tour of the SWTW to learn about how the SWTW builds Air Force Special Warfare Airmen and prepares them for combat.

Learning Engineering in Focus Today

Published Dec. 3, 2024
Air Education and Training Command

Editor's note: This article examining concepts surrounding learning engineering during an Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference session titled Implementing Learning Engineering in Military Environments: An Operational & Tactical Perspective was republished with the permission.

Sharing their perspectives on this topic are panelists Lindsey Fredman, Director, Air Force Career Development Academy, ADC/2AF/AFCDA; Benjamin Goldberg, PhD, Senior Scientist, U.S. Army DEVCOM SC STTC; Ralucca Gera, PhD, Professor of Mathematics, Academic Associate Chair, Department of Applied Mathematics, Naval Postgraduate School; and Jennifer Sinclair, Deputy Commander and Chief Learning Officer, USCG Force Readiness Command.

Event moderator Wendy Walsh, EdD, Chief Learning Officer, HQ AETC, said, “I’m bringing together people that represent the efforts of learning engineering across the services.” With panelists from the Navy, Air Force, Army and Coast Guard, she said, this panel “brings a joint service perspective of how we might implement learning engineering.” As chief learning officer, Walsh said, “my job is to optimize the learning environments and systems for the total force. It’s a systems perspective.”

She added, the role entails “understanding what learning is happening out there. Where are people challenged? Where are the opportunities to see successful practices in one area and carry them on to another? So, it’s really an enabling structure for the total force for learning, but also for the generals that are leading our Air Education and Training Command, helping them to see the enterprise.”

In explaining learning engineering, Walsh identifies three basic areas: human-centered design, interdisciplinarity and evidence- and competency-based learning. Employing human-centered design in the learning environment, Walsh explained, involves awareness of individual learning preferences and attributes, and “designing learning experiences to optimize that so you can learn quicker and retain longer.”

Walsh added, “As we’re moving into having more technology, especially large language models that really allow us to do a lot more customization, we might ask what that human-machine interface looks like. How are we utilizing the current and emerging tools and innovations to help that human-centered design along?”

The second area, interdisciplinarity, concerns “how we are bringing together all the different academic disciplines, the job fields, and figuring out how we can work together and help each other understand and see the complexity of the systems and the threats that we’re facing today,” Walsh said.

Evidence- and competency-based learning, the third aspect, focuses on the importance of understanding and measuring competencies in various roles. “It’s really about creating a structure or a system that we can measure, and that we have evidence of competencies in various roles,” she said, and how those competencies can be improved.

“That is the objective of learning engineering - to look at learning through the lens of science, through the lens of many different disciplines, to glean what we can to really understand and facilitate learning,” Walsh said.

Asked what she hopes attendees of the session gather from it, Walsh said, “Learning engineering has just around a decade of research. It’s a very new approach. And so, first and foremost, I want people to be introduced to the concept of learning engineering and to see how they fit in. I want to demystify it,” adding, “I am incredibly passionate about this, because I do believe this is the way that each individual can see that pathway of how they contribute to the whole.”

Also, Walsh added, with this panel is the operational and tactical level, “I’ll be talking to educators, people who are working in the learning environments across the services, and asking them about how they’re applying it. They’re working directly in education, training or research environments. How are they applying the principles of learning engineering to what they’re doing within their service?”

“The aim is really to build a community of practice around learning engineering. I want people to think about it, ask questions about it, just ignite their curiosity,” she said.

Walsh concluded by sharing her key messages about the importance of learning as a competitive advantage and the potential of learning engineering to optimize human performance and enhance mission readiness.

“Many times, when we talk about learning or achieving our mission, we talk about what problem we are trying to solve,” said Walsh. “And one of the ideas that I love to leave people with is, ‘how are we imagining a future that we want and thinking about how we can potentially work together and co-create learning environments that are optimized?’ So, it’s moving beyond the competitive ‘us and them’ to really creating a total force, a unified joint force that is creating an environment for all of our service members to learn and to optimize their contributions to the mission. And I think that learning engineering gives us a roadmap for being able to do that.”

“I like to say learning is our competitive advantage,” Walsh concluded. “When we have that mindset of learning, and if we can engineer that and really discover ways that we can optimize our learning environments, the human performance of learning, the collectiveness of learning, we will be unstoppable. We will be able to create the realities and achieve the mission that we need.”

Source: I/ITSEC Show Daily, Day 2