ABSTRACT

By 1980, the U.S. Air Force determined training requirements by holding utilization and training workshops where trainers and training managers met with representatives from operational commands to consider issues and needs regarding training objectives, course content, and optional settings for accomplishing training (Mitchell, Sturdevant, Vaughan, & Rueter, 1987). These conferences evolved from earlier procedures where initial skills technical training was aligned with initial job requirements (“hasty grad” projects), while at the same time planning for training requirements deferred to field training detachments, mobile training teams, or on-the-job training (OJT; Ruck & Birdlebough, 1977; Vaughan, 1978). Only minimal data were available for determining appropriate training settings for Air Force specialty (AFS) tasks; thus, these decisions were, of necessity, based almost entirely upon conferees’ personal experience or on known constraints at the resident training school. For these reasons, many decisions made in utilization and training workshops could not be consistently replicated. In addition, no formal evaluation or estimates were made of the impact of such decisions on personnel utilization, OJT costs, or mission performance (Ruck, 1982).