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Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks: Creating an Institutional Research Mindset through Data-Informed Decision-Making in Intermediate Joint PME

Air University Public Affairs

Dec. 7, 2023 | 18:20

Stephanie Erwin & Ronald Dains

As professional military education (PME) moves towards outcomes-based educational models, institutional leadership seeks to develop a more intentional institutional research mindset, one driven through informed data collection,
analysis, and decision-making, while ensuring the military educational experience remains adaptable and agile to meet future operational and strategic challenges. Such a shift is not bereft of challenges. Certainly, this includes moving from more inputs-centric models towards outcomes-based education but also bridging the gaps in discipline and occupation (military vs civilian academic) and establishing intrinsic faculty buy-in. One Intermediate Joint PME institution has sought to create this institutional research mindset through an intensive faculty development and collaboration effort in mixed institutional research teams, both informal and formal. Formal institutional research efforts included qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods studies. This presentation presents both the overall initiative and examples of the empirical research and findings within. As a whole this effort remains a
work-in-progress, however individual studies highlighted include a focused ethnography on wargame classification, a concurrent triangulation mixed methods study on student rewrites, a descriptive statistical analyses on geo-bachelor and declination student status, an explanatory sequential mixed method study to determine distinguished graduates, and others. In support of creating an institutional research mindset and to best address the articulated research endeavors, the school sought to enhance faculty development and collaboration by creating cross-departmental and interdisciplinary research teams comprised of civilian academics, permanent party military, and military fellows. This not only bolstered the research designs of individual studies but enabled an intrinsic institutional data-informed decision making mindset across the faculty including efforts towards enhanced data visualization, strategic lines of effort, and organizational change.