Study 2: Good governance introduction course: A Dutch example of online constructivist officer education

Various perspectives, different interpretations and uncertainties often make military operations multi-dimensional and fuzzy. Recent research shows that officer cadets find it difficult to cope with such military operational settings. Consequently, there is a need for a learning theory to deal with such complex situations during military operations.

With its multi-dimensional worldview, constructivism can provide that learning theory. Furthermore, due to the advantages of online learning catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the usage of online education is growing. That leaves us the general question of how we can adequately provide online constructivist education to officer cadets and officers.

Therefore, we sought answers to two specific questions. Firstly, what is a suitable instructional design method to enable online constructivist learning? Secondly, how can we use such an instructional design method to create an online constructivist course for officers?

To this end, we examined the online constructivist courses of an educational program for physicians in training at the Academy for Postgraduate Medical Education of the Maastricht University Medical Centre+. We then used the instructional design underlying those courses to create an online constructivist course for officers at the Civil-Military Interaction Command of the Royal Netherlands Army: the Good Governance introduction course (Good GOV course).

Per phase, we described the learning activities, including some examples of questions and assignments. The design of the Good GOV course shows how the military can employ an instructional design commonly used in another field to improve military education. Further exploration and research were considered crucial to answer the question of how military education can reap the benefits of learning sciences and take advantage of the learning experiences of other professions and organizations.

Methods

Instructional design.