WASHINGTON — Air Schooling and Coaching Command is in search of new concepts on methods to remodel the way in which it trains the following era of airmen — with a whole lot of hundreds of {dollars} in prize cash is on the road.
The winners of the second annual iChallenge competitors can be introduced in San Antonio, Texas, on Could 24, throughout the ForceCon convention.
The particular person or crew who wins the highest prize will obtain $225,000 for use as seed cash to additional develop the highest thought. Two runners-up will every take a $125,000 prize.
In a Could 11 interview, Chris Adams, AETC’s innovation development division chief, stated the command hopes the competition will spark airmen’s curiosity in innovating new methods to coach personnel, uncover these concepts, and get the innovators the mandatory assets to make their concepts a actuality and get them into airmen’s arms.
The iChallenge contest not solely will get revolutionary airmen in entrance of command management, Adams stated, but it surely additionally connects them with each other, trade officers, tutorial organizations and funding sources to allow them to additional alternate concepts. This would be the first time representatives from trade and academia will hear the iChallenge pitches.
“One factor that we’re doing this yr is sharing what our pitches are so we will help clear up our power improvement gaps and challenges and actually speed up change like [Chief of Staff] Gen. [CQ] Brown has tasked us all to do,” Lt. Col. CJ Hale, chief of the fast deployment workplace at AETC, stated within the interview. “This can be an awesome alternative for trade and academia to see the place our airmen innovators’ minds are and the way they’re making an attempt to include rising know-how to modernize and improve the AETC mission.”
Opponents on this yr’s iChallenge entered in certainly one of 4 classes. One class focuses on coaching “multi-capable airmen,” an idea during which U.S. Air Pressure personnel are taught the fundamentals of doing different jobs along with their very own. This might turn out to be needed in a wartime scenario, during which airmen on remoted bases with out reinforcements must carry out a number of jobs to maintain the unit functioning. Brown emphasised the significance of multi-capable airmen in his “Speed up Change or Lose” technique.
One other class is in search of methods to make use of augmented or digital actuality, in addition to combined or prolonged actuality — know-how meant to enhance how the service trains its power. AETC has already used these ideas in packages akin to Pilot Coaching Subsequent, which used synthetic intelligence and digital actuality to enhance and quicken the method for coaching new pilots.
The opposite two classes embody concepts for constructing and delivering customizable software program functions, and for enhancing airmen and leaders’ mushy expertise, akin to communication.
Hale stated AETC is especially desirous about making coaching packages to create multi-capable airmen which can be accessible, trendy and customizable. The command additionally desires to create and replace these coaching packages in-house by airmen, as a substitute of contracting out and having to return to distributors for updates.
Discovering recent and revolutionary methods to make use of know-how, akin to digital and augmented actuality, in coaching is essential because the Air Pressure seeks new recruits who grew up as “digital natives,” Adams stated.
Digital actuality permits full immersion in a computer-generated surroundings, generally by utilizing goggles, and augmented actuality overlays digital components on prime of the truth the consumer sees. For example of augmented actuality, Adams cited the sport Pokémon Go, during which gamers use their smartphones to search out and seize hidden creatures as they stroll round.
“This permits us to really meet our learners the place they’re,” Adams stated. “They’ve been utilizing these things all their lives. They’ve finished Pokémon Go and all these different issues, so that is very pure for them.”
And adopting these sort of immersive studying methods offers college students extra management over how they be taught, Adams stated, since they’ll usually continue learning at house and examine at their very own tempo.
Every of contestant has 10 minutes earlier than the choice board, which incorporates the incoming AETC commander, Lt. Gen. Brian Robinson. That features a 3-minute pitch for his or her thought, adopted by a 7-minute question-and-answer session with the judges.
The inaugural iChallenge competitors final yr, which was structured in another way than this yr’s contest, awarded first prizes to concepts in three completely different classes, together with an award for an interactive cyber schooling program referred to as Cyber House Odyssey.
With $475,000 in complete prize cash supplied this yr, there’s additionally rather more cash at stake than final yr, during which the prizes totaled $300,000.
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter at Protection News. He beforehand reported for Navy.com, masking the Pentagon, particular operations and air warfare. Earlier than that, he coated U.S. Air Pressure management, personnel and operations for Air Pressure Instances.
