Class will help soldiers tap into war-zone info
Participants will make use of lessons learned
By Kelly Kennedy
Times staff writer
The Center for Army Lessons Learned prides itself on getting information from the war zone back to soldiers who can benefit from it.
Its Web site, http://call.army.mil, gets millions of hits a month. On it, soldiers can view the latest tips and lessons on combat and peacekeeping operations.
The site features text and links on a host of topics, including the current operating environment, cultural awareness skills in a combat zone, urban operations and family readiness. It also has links to the lessons learned of other service branches.
To make sure soldiers can access all that information efficiently, the center has created a three-day class teaching soldiers how to use CALL information to create their own company-level training.
The class, which begins the last week of March, will teach students to navigate the CALL database, a collection that includes 1.5 million documents dating to the Vietnam War, up-to-the-minute after-action reports from soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and digital versions of Army training documents.
It also will teach soldiers how to feed updated information back into the system.
“That’s where the integration process comes in, sharing these lessons with each other,” said CALL spokesman Col. Charles Darden. “It’s a wealth of information just sitting out there waiting for people to use.”
Three members of CALL will teach the class at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Instructors plan to teach four classes of six to 12 students each year.
Students will find out how to pull information from the CALL Web site, which is available to anyone with an Army Knowledge Online account. They’ll learn how to organize that information into a classroom format, how to track information to keep their classes up-to-date and how to request information not available on the Web site.
According to Darden, the new course came about after Lt. Gen. James L. Lovelace Jr., the Army’s operations chief, asked his staff to revamp AR 11-13, the Army Lessons Learned Program: System Development and Application regulation. Lovelace signed the updated regulation in December.
In the future, Darden said, CALL administrators will consider sending instructors out to units to teach the course as mobile teams. But course developer Bill Snider said it’s important to teach the class in person, rather than as a Web course, so teachers and students can make connections and work together in the future.
Three units, the 84th Army Reserve Readiness Training Command at Fort McCoy, Wis., the 35th National Guard Infantry Division of Fort Leavenworth, and, tentatively, the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Infantry Division at Fort Riley, Kan., will make up the first class.
As soon as the pilot class ends, Snider said, the instructors will organize a class schedule and post it on the CALL Web site, where soldiers will be able to request a class slot.