Wing changing Training Standards

[ammotrucker]

I would like to know what your respone would be if your Wing told you that they were going to implement a policy that all training was to be accomplished though a Wing Authorized Trainer WAT and those trainer would be evaluated by Wing Authorzied Evaulators WAE. 

This is going away from the SET program

[CadetProgramGuy]

If you wing uses policy letters to establish who the Skills Evaluators are, then the program is already in place.

Even if you have the SET ability, the wing should come out with a Policy Letter naming you a bona fide Skills Evaluator.

[mynetdude]

I don't know if that would be better or worse.  It would be better in the sense that hopefully the wing personnel that are WAE are more qualified than you are or at least hold better/higher standards for training than you could possibly at the unit level?

My only concern is, if you can only be evaluated by wing only for a given ES qualification then it will take a very long time to get in line to be qualified especially when there are limited resources (aka manpower).

There was a time when ORWG had a policy that only those of the ES director from WG could/would approve of SET "bona fide" personnel across the state although it didn't hold much water as nobody ever mentioned a policy letter as if there was such and to this date I have not seen one that I am aware of or I am looking in the wrong places but then again I'm not the ES officer of my squadron.

So, my take? I still say we should have SET personnel within every squadron that reports back to wing to a WAE for standardization and skills eval review and then they go back to their squadrons even though these guys are not WAE they would still be approved by their respective wings to do unit level training.

[jimmydeanno]

My old wing did this - it worked fairly well.  The benefit was that you knew (or at least assumed) that the trainer and evaluator knew what the heck they were doing.

The only disadvantage we found was getting someone with the skill set we needed to get to our squadron.  After pulling it from the brink of shutting down, we didn't have any ES rated personnel that were approved to sign-off.  The wing did a poor job of spreading the wealth.   For example, all the aircrew evaluators were in the northern part of the state and the ground evaluators were on the western part of the state - with us in the south eastern, you can imagine how little we got done.

It took us about a year just to get an evaluator down to our area to get 3 people signed off in UDF.  Kind of sad. 

As an idea overall, I think if implemented well, it provides a better opportunity to standardize your training better and not worry about if the Podunk squadron is requiring high-angle rescue as part of UDF.

[floridacyclist]

I have no problem with the WAE....the new 60-3 specifically states that evaluators should be approved by the wing to sign off on tasks. My only problem is the part about only WAT people being allowed to teach/train. Not only would this not significantly increase the quality of the training, but would prevent many ESOs from even talking about any task-related material at a meeting as that would be conductiing unauthorized training. I see that part as having a much greater squashing effect on any training and advancement that we may wish to accomplish than anything else.

Given strict-enough evaluation standards, poor instructors will eventually find themselves out of work as it is realized that none of their people ever pass an eval....and the good instructors will find themselves in demand. For that matter, I really don't care how a person gets the knowledge and skills...prior military, self-study, group study, or at a class personally taught by Col Desmarais as long as they can pass a fair and complete evaluation by someone who actually knows how to do one.

[isuhawkeye]

When set was created Iowa, and several NCR wings realized that SET was way to easy to achieve so we created appointment letters for SET qualified member.  This was back wen Rex Glasgow was wing CC

[BigMojo]

I guess my view would be that it would be good to have WAE's. As Gene said, it's the approved "trainer" part that's the rub for me. Allow people with the qual already in place to train, and then call in an approved person to do the pass/fail/signoff. Why does it matter how you learned the material as long as you learned it to the satisfaction of the evaluator? It would prevent people "who know people" to scream through training and get signoffs without having a firm grasp on the material. This wouldn't prevent people from progressing in my mind, it would just insure they know what they are supposed to know.

Squadrons can train and learn the material, pull an NFT number for a given Sat, and have the WAE come in and evaluate the group interested. They just need to have the integrity to fail people if they honestly don't know the material, and not get "overly critical" and require perfection.

[ammotrucker]

I may have misunderstood the concept.  Gene I thought that it was stated that if any member of your squadron wanted to be a trainer they could.  but, they would then have to be approved. 

the evaulation part is not every member that is signed off.  The eval is done post sign-off in a random format that evals the training that the trainer gives.

this meaning that the evauation is of the trainer.  But, if inconsistent in there training then all signed off by this trainer would then become disqualified, until further training is received

[floridacyclist]

I understood that the trainer would have to attend a TTT-type course and be approved before being allowed to teach in order to assure that everyone is teaching the same material. While I fully support instructor development, I also recognize that sometimes you just gotta git'r dun and do what you have to do to get your folks to be able to pass an eval.

One idea that I had was to videotape some really good instructors teaching specific tasks and make their lessons downloadable on the web. You could do it by task number so that an ESO could download as many classes as he hoped to teach that night and then go through the video with his squadron as a group with a discussion afterward. They of course would still have to line up a formal eval from a WAE, but this would still help when you have nobody around to teach certain classes.

[Dragoon]

Anyone can train. Only evaluators can evaluate.  All sign offs need to be done by evaluators.  I've seen GREAT training conducted by inexperienced members who spent time studying the books.  Then an evaluator came in to test and confirm that everyone was taught correctly.

The SET system, without adding in some kind of command approval, means that a brand new 12 year old GTM 3 who takes the online SET test can now evalute other GTM trainees throughout the wing.  Dumb idea.

Having Wing Command approval of evaluators makes lots of sense.  The key is to make sure there are enough evaluators to grow enough ES guys to get the work done.

[Eclipse]

The SET system, without adding in some kind of command approval, means that a brand new 12 year old GTM 3 who takes the online SET test can now evalute other GTM trainees throughout the wing.  Dumb idea.

Except that the new system requires commander's approval for the signatures.  Yes an inappropriate member can physically sign things off, but the commander is the safety valve, which is how it should stay.

[notaNCO forever]

You are, at least in my wing, supposed to have approval from the wing commander to actual sign of with SET. I thought this was a national reg but maybe not. 

[floridacyclist]

The SET system, without adding in some kind of command approval, means that a brand new 12 year old GTM 3 who takes the online SET test can now evalute other GTM trainees throughout the wing.  Dumb idea.

Except that the new system requires commander's approval for the signatures.  Yes an inappropriate member can physically sign things off, but the commander is the safety valve, which is how it should stay.

Most commanders have no idea who signs off on an SQTR. Your cadet goes off, gets trained and signed off by someone else, and comes back with a full SQTR. The commander has no way to really track down all of those CAPIDs and verify their credentials or evaluation abilities. A lot of this goes back to my desire to have SETs approved in E-services and have the system seek individual approval for each task signed off on.....at the very least, it should not let you put a CAPID in without verifying that person is a qualified and approved evaluator.

It's not always about trusting the person being evaluated; we had a recent situation where a SMWOG was not only signing off on stuff that he wasn't even qualified to do himself, he was wearing 2nd Lt bars in the process. Now thanks to him, several of our cadets who believed him have to be reevaluated on anything that he touched.

[Eclipse]

Most commanders have no idea who signs off on an SQTR.

Then they need to find out, considering the ramifications of poor ES performance to both the member and the corporation, this is not something which shoudl just "happen".

If you have that many members training that its onerous to be checking, then you shoudl have enough staff to  delegate this process.

I would bet that in most cases the sign offs are being done within the unit or group (or the same basic geographic area), NESA and similar notwithstanding.  Optimally the SET's should be form the unit and be a trusted member.

If the idea is to have Wing review submitted requests to approve SET status, I don't like it, but whatever.
If the idea is to further propagate this WTA nonsense and herd everyone into one place for sign-offs, no, no, no. 

That will further propagate a GOB network of ES "haves and have-nots" and  reduce our effectiveness and readiness. The iCC commented in the IAWG videos that these WTA ideas will not work in states like MI and FL because of their size.   You'll wind up legitimatizing what we already have today - small, low-profile units who never get to do anything "cool" because they are 6 hours from the main population centers.

And under no circumstances shoudl there be approved "trainers".  A compass is a compass, and the tasks are the tasks.  You can either perform them or not.  Where you learned is irrelevant.

To the last point about having seniors running amuck with incorrect grade and sign-offs, someone needs to be paying closer attention to the inmates...

[Camas]

Most commanders have no idea who signs off on an SQTR. Your cadet goes off, gets trained and signed off by someone else, and comes back with a full SQTR.

If I understand your concern, are you questioning if these evaluators are truly qualified in their respective mission skills and have SET training as well? The "National Reports" module under "My Operations Qualifications/National Reports" in e-services has this information.  Once there, go to "Mbr Qual Info Report"; punch in the CAPID of the member in question and that'll give you all of his or her qualifications.

[floridacyclist]

In which case it could very easily be a 12yo UDF member who was himself pencil-whipped through the training and who managed to stay awake long enough to click through the online SET test.

[Eclipse]

In which case it could very easily be a 12yo UDF member who was himself pencil-whipped through the training and who managed to stay awake long enough to click through the online SET test.

And the commander would be fully justified to yank anything that 12 year old signed off if he feels he is not appropriate to be an SET.

Three clicks and done.

[davedove]

There are controls in the current system and if everyone does their job properly, then everything is okay.

If people are not doing the job properly, then that is what should be addressed.

You're never going to completely idiot proof a system.  Plus, if you've got a group of people working together to get around a system, it's really hard to stop.

Note that I don't have any problems with trying to make the current system better.  We have to be careful though, that we're not so busy looking for problems that we forget to do our job.

[floridacyclist]

Eclipse and Camas are arguing from two totally different sides of the issue.

Camas is saying that all you have to do is look up someone's qualifications in E-services and if they are qualified, then their sign-off is good. Eclipse is saying that commanders should know who signs off on their people. I'm saying that all looking in E-services will tell you is that A) They have the base-level qualification, and B) They passed the SET. The flip side to that is that if your people go elsewhere for training or are training in subjects that you yourself have no clue about, you have no way of knowing whether the sign-off is worth a hoot or not. As a commander, I would not feel right denying someone a qualification because I did not personaly recognize all of the CAPIDs on their SQTR, some of which may have been filled out up to two years earlier.

[Camas]

In which case it could very easily be a 12yo UDF member who was himself pencil-whipped through the training and who managed to stay awake long enough to click through the online SET test.

True enough but wasn't sure if forum members were aware of how one can look up SET and mission qualifications which is why I made the comment.

Eclipse and Camas are arguing from two totally different sides of the issue.  Camas is saying that all you have to do is look up someone's qualifications in E-services and if they are qualified, then their sign-off is good.

No argument intended, just making a point.  As mentioned, the system's not perfect.