CTC-3 Adapts 21st Century TechnologyInnovating to Improve Student Learning
The U.S. Marine Corps is known for its agility and adaptability, and these qualities extend beyond the battlefield to include innovative solutions in the realm of technology. CTC-3, or Communication Training Command-3, has developed an application that improves training, productivity, and readiness among Marines with III Marine Expeditionary Force.
According to US Marine Corps Capt. Kristian Conroy, director of CTC-3, the app serves as a centralized location for storing and accessing student data, streamlining decision-making and optimizing course scheduling. This digital system has opened up an avenue for administrative error correction that was not possible before through logical filtering rules.
With this app, instructors can enter and access student feedback, ratings, attendance records, grades and demographic data so they can better support and teach Navy students in the field of communications. The data is then fed into Microsoft Power BI system where it can be used during leadership and instructor briefings while reducing the manual work required to produce reports.
“The new method further streamlines daily administrative processing while making data collection an almost fully automated background process that functionally always feeds flexible and up-to-date data visualizations for decision-makers,” said Conroy.
By using this app with Microsoft Power BI systems it reduces labor hours allowing more time to teach students which will help foster a more advanced generation of Marines within the field of communications.
“The new system has the ability to affect scheduling protocols, testing protocols, subject prioritization teaching protocols effectively everything else that has measurable data metrics with which to derive trends.” said Conroy.
Leadership and instructors at CTC are focusing their efforts on meeting 21st-century learning objectives set by retired US Marine Corps Colonel Powers who identified how individual student’s data could help inform talent management functions tailor future learning experiences assess a marine’s competencies based on performance rather than assumptions.
The CTC application is closing the pre-existing technology gap between Microsoft Power BI and the data collection procedures of US Marine Corps systems. Using these two systems together reduces labor hours, allowing more time to teach students and foster a more advanced generation of Marines within the field of communications.
As leaders, instructors, and students within CTC-3 experience the cultural shift of becoming more data-driven, CTC-3 has shown measurable improvements in the pace and quality of their decision making. The impact of the CTC application is directly related to subject prioritization, scheduling, testing, and teaching efficiency. As a direct result, CTC-3 decision making can now be based on tangible versus intangible data.
“Historically decision making in the US Marine Corps has been done anecdotally because there were no tools to analyze data efficiently,” said Conroy. “CTC-3 has been using a crawl walk and run approach. CTC-3 is still in tracking phase getting used to reporting based on data we no longer speak based on assumptions but on what the data says.”
To conclude, this app allows for better communication between instructors and students by providing a centralized location for storing student information such as feedback ratings attendance records grades demographic data etc which will help support Navy students in their learning experience. With this tool at their disposal, Marines are better equipped than ever before to adapt quickly to changing circumstances while staying ahead of emerging threats both on and off the battlefield.
It is confirmed that from DVIDS Hub: “CTC-3 adapts 21st century technology, innovating to improve student learning.”
