To study or not to study.

[Cautious SM]

I am new in my squadron and I was wondering is it bad to have study sessions at a Squadron meeting? Are study sessions not good use of squadron time? How many people have study sessions at their meetings?

[Eclipse]

What are you studying?

Despite what some may say here, the unit meeting is supposed to be the primary venue for member training, so studying during a meeting isn't necessarily a bad thing.

[MIKE]

I thought it used to say that achievement/milestone testing were intended for self study... So I looked it up in CAPR 52-16 1-2.  They use the term self-paced study in 1-2. a. (2) for the leadership portion but included in  1-2. b. (2) for aerospace they list both self-paced and group study.

IMHO, I don't agree that study-groups for specific achievement/milestone tests is an effective use of the meeting...  Pre-test mentoring to clear up questions after you have studied at home however...

[Eclipse]

OK, I guess we need further clarification - are we talking about cadets or seniors?

[DC]

OK, I guess we need further clarification - are we talking about cadets or seniors?

It is presumable we are talking about cadets, this is the Cadet Programs Management forum...

I think that the textbook studying needs to be up to cadets to do themselves, if they need help, that is where mentoring comes in.

I find that you can pretty much fill meeting time with classes, some different angles to leadership/followership not found in our beloved leadership books, hands on teambuilding, ES, AE, there are tons of things you can do and keep yourselves busy at meetings.

[Eclipse]

   I didn't even pay attention to what forum this was...carry on.   

[jimmydeanno]

My take on this is that squadron meeting time could be better served doing hands on activities and fulfilling the requirements for the CP.  While studying may provide them an opportunity to do better on their tests, they might find that the meeting becomes a tad boring.

I think that the limited time that we have for meetings should be better spent doing other activities.

[mikeylikey]

I was in a SQD that did the CPFT the first half and broke up into small mentoring groups for the remainder of the meeting to go over either Leadership or Aerospace material.  The following week would be AE or Leadership testing, and the test scores were somewhat better that they had the chance to "study" the week before. 

We all know most Cadets put off studying until the day before or the day of the achievement test anyway. 

I figured, instead of devoting 2.5 hours to PT testing and then Basketball, they might as well "study".  Now I did not agree it was a time for them to just begin reading the material, they were expected to already have the material read, and would bring questions, and discussion topics with them. 

After about 25-30 minutes, most Cadets were done "studying" (mentoring) and we moved on to other "hip-pocket" training.

[M.Glisson003]

I personally think its a bad thing to do. Studying can be done at home. It wastes valuable time that can done doing something fun.

Unless there is a cadet that is struggling and needs help. In that case time should be set aside for 'mentoring' that cadet.

[Michael]

My squadron did something like that way back when, and we really suffered from not being able to do other things.