The accelerating convergence of major power competition, cooperation, and conflict known as Accelerated Warfare is challenging Australia’s traditional 10-year strategic horizon. As described in Army’s Future Ready Training System (FRTS): “It is the Army training system that gives Army the capacity to adapt to Accelerated Warfare…at present, it does not do this quickly enough or in ways optimised for how Army’s people learn”.

The Foundation Training Review demonstrated that the existing adaptation of the ADDIE instructional systems design framework (Analyse, Design, Develop, Implement and Evaluate) prepares the workforce to achieve the current strategic defence objectives but lacks the agility, capacity, or culture for Army’s projected future workforce. It is characterised by instructor-led courses that deliver generalist content in highly synchronous and prescriptive career pathways.

Now the Army is attempting to transform into a FRTS to meet those strategic challenges presented by Accelerated Warfare. System transformation implies a deliberate process to amend the fundamental objectives, form, and function of the system’s current state. It could be argued that the current trend towards online training is not transformational, but rather it is an ad-hoc modernisation of delivery tools in response to environmental factors that is out of sync with contemporary pedagogical strategies and systems.

The Learning Design component of the FRTS needs a spiralled development cycle within a ‘system of systems’ that supports continuous review, development, and adaptation to meet evolving workforce needs and industry influences. This is where the Mosaic Learning Model comes in. First, we need to understand the training system needs. While the Mosaic Learning Model was developed through analysis of the officer training continuum, this framework can be applied across the Army’s – or even Defence’s – training system.

What do we need from a training system?

The organisation needs an agile, simple, and sustainable training system that continuously reviews and adapts to the evolving strategic environment; an environment that is influenced by geopolitical drivers, emerging platforms, systems, technologies, and future workforce challenges. As described by Army’s FRTS Transformation Program Strategy, we require “A Future Ready Training System that unlocks the full potential of our people and our Army to ensure future mission success. Always innovating; Always experimenting; Always accessible.”

Emerging Defence capabilities fundamentally change the employment needs of the Army. Our workforce of the future Army will be characterised by jobs demanding cognitive intelligence, technical literacy, high emotional intelligence, and personal resilience. In response, the organisation is transforming its human resource management and workforce systems approach. These projected workforce needs will be in high demand within the broader Australian labour market, challenging employers like the Australian Army to attract, develop, and retain a qualified future workforce.

Projections for Army’s future workforce demographics predict one which is more multicultural, older, and multigenerational; which implies the need for an adaptive training system design that can be tailored to a broader range of workforce learning needs. The future workforce will be the most educated generation, based on STEM education, where digital and artificial/augmented intelligence (AI) literacy is the norm.

So what is the ‘Desired System’?

The desired system “will embrace innovation in learning and education… The training system must be engaging, repeatable and measurable utilising technology, simulation, on-demand content, data analytics and feedback to enhance learning and workforce performance”. The system must continuously respond and adapt to those strategic change drivers. These influences require a spiralled development cycle within a ‘system of systems’ that integrates best-practice across the key influencing industries.

The Mosaic Learning Model

The Mosaic Learning Model (MLM) is a ‘system-of-systems’ training design model that is simple, sustainable, and adaptable to the future workforce learning requirements at the organisational point of need. The model leverages the fundamentals of DARPA’s Mosaic Warfare in arranging individual platforms, or learning components, like the tiles of a mosaic. Capability-themed macro-systems made up of asynchronous interventions, or ‘Learning Tiles’, engender learner-centric pathways adaptive to organisational tempo and individual career milestones. The model optimises the future training system by deliberately de-optimising the existing sub-system.

Capability tiles align to a generic progression of personnel through the organisation to provide a consolidated focus for the internal learning tiles. Capability tiles are deliberately rank and time agnostic to afford personnel to engage with relevant training that prepares them for their next role, not their next rank.

Progression through the capability-themed macro-systems increases the fluidity of pathways available to the learner. Independent learning tiles enable the workforce to engage with the training relevant to them and their current roles, rather than centralised ‘catch-all’ courses prior to promotion. The Mosaic Learning Model breaks from Army’s existing instructor-centric methodologies to better meet the learning needs of the future workforce through contemporary and adaptive pedagogical strategies tailored to each learning tile.

Foundation training design is centrally controlled. Centralised faculties are responsible for curriculum development, implementation, and adaptation of their learning tiles across the training system to reduce training duplication and enhance student learning outcomes at the point of need. Each learning tile can be aligned to a pedagogical strategy and delivery model to suit the content. Those strategies enable tailored approaches to training validation and the assessment tools employed.

From the example, those Land Operations learning tiles may include collaborative practical assessments in the form of intensive staff planning activities, while those Capability learning tiles may emphasise reflective and inquiry-based strategies that require students to complete research assignments from their home locations. Career mapping and progression through capability tiles must be enabled by an intelligent and adaptive approach to the recognition of prior learning and acceptance of workplace training. This can be supported through AI-enabled educational tools, command-initiated training recognition, and acceptance of foundational skills requirements.

A faculty framework refers functional organisation of a curriculum into fundamental subject areas for the delivery of a workforce development program. The division allows for the faculty to design and adapt their learning tiles to meet the evolving influences of those previously mentioned strategic drivers. These targeted adaptations enable the system to incrementally and constantly evolve to maintain industry best-practice without directly impacting every learning tile within the system.

Where is the risk?

While the Mosaic Learning Model engenders Defence’s emphasis of capability ‘teaming’ and interoperability across the joint enterprise, these same compartmentalised learning tiles increase the risk of siloed faculty development with diverging lines of progression. The mitigation for this is multifaceted. The system design authority that links faculties, industry, and the fighting force end users is responsible for macro development and curriculum alignment. A spiralled development cycle that habitually links learning tiles with those same external stakeholders enables continual system adaptation to contemporary best practice.

Training at the point of need implies providing only the right training at the right time. This requires organisational foresight in career mapping and the time for all personnel to engage with those learning tiles ahead of their next appointment, at the cost to their current unit. The immediately apparent risk is that personnel will not be able to achieve these training interventions in time or will only engage with those critical learning tiles.

The second order effect sees an Army of specialist personnel only trained for the specific skills, knowledge, and attitudes necessary for their appointments, rather than an organisation of adaptive generalists. This is not insurmountable. It would require investment in human resource management through career mapping to include foundational core components across the capability tiles. These risks are not unique to the Mosaic Learning Model and are not restricted to the Future Ready Training System. A cultural change requires investment of effort across all aspects of the organisation.

Army must be transformational in its design of the FRTS if it wants to become competitive in next-generation warfighting as a middle power. Heavy investment in the defence industry and emerging technology is only useful if the workforce is cognitively equipped with the skills, knowledge, and attitudes to embrace those capabilities to their fullest potential. The Mosaic Learning Model could be transformational for the Australian Army. But it requires cultural change and a willingness to break away from those courses we view as a ‘rite of passage’ – that willingness does not currently exist. The Mosaic Learning Model meets the challenges of Accelerated Warfare through an innovative and adaptive training design system that provides contemporary training with evolving best-practice learning strategies that is delivered at the point of need for the individual and the organisation. It is transformational.