Review of the National Defense Intelligence College's Master's Degree in Science and Technology Intelligence (2011) / Chapter Skim
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Chapter 1 Program, Curriculum, and Syllabi Review
Chapter 1 Program, Curriculum, and Syllabi Review
Pages 3-30
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The statement of task associated with this request reads as follows: To provide a national level perspective to the National Defense Intelligence College (NDIC) as it plans for a new master's degree program scheduled to start 3
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It is currently housed at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) headquarters facility in Washington, D.C.
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intelligence community. As a program funded by the national intelligence community, NDIC's MS&TI program has both a professional and an academic duty to enrich the skill sets of intelligence professionals, with a specific focus on improving the nation's ability to collect, analyze, and provide intelligence product in the areas of foreign science and technology development.
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Many have served on national boards and commissions to include the National Security Council, Intelligence Science Board, the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, and selected presidential commissions. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
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. The five concentration areas currently include Weapons of Mass Destruction, Information Operations and Cyber Intelligence, Emerging and Disruptive Technologies, Geostrategic Resources and the Environment, and Foreign Denial and Deception.
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Of these courses, five, marked A, are considered to be developed, available to be taught, and mature in terms of content, learning objectives, and structured course material. One, MST 666, which is marked D, is considered to be under development, and one, MST 656 marked F, is considered to be a future development need (NDIC, 2011b)
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Syllabi A detailed description of the course work of the MS&TI program was provided to the committee. The courses annotated as "on hand" or "under development" all included a course description, a description of the course's contribution to the mission, expected learning outcomes, a list of intelligence community competencies, course requirements, grading criteria, a reading list, a session outline with subjects and issues being covered, and defined learning objectives.
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However, the two restatements of learning objectives differ in three important ways: first, in the prerequisite knowledge demanded of the student; second, in the capabilities they demand of the instructor; and, third, in overall learning outcomes called for by the program. These differences are critical to the administration of the MS&TI program.
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And it is, in fact, the overall program learning outcomes that are at stake. If the individual course learning objectives are poorly and imprecisely worded and defined, then the outcomes will range widely, depending on individual student ambitions and efforts.
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The core competencies that are not well addressed in the syllabi include Leadership and Integrity and Management Proficiency. The elements of Leadership and Integrity identified in the ODNI Competency Subdirectory, such as Developing Others and Leveraging Diversity, are difficult to teach in a classroom environment.
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to implement operational schedules," according CIA's description for the job of systems analyst, available online at www.cia.gov/careers/opportunities/science-technology/systems-engineer.html, last accessed July 15, 2011. Furthermore, systems engineering expertise is increasingly being identified as a critical core competency that is presenting short supply in today's intelligence community (NRC, 2011a; NRC, 2011b)
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This impacts both the expectations of student preparation prior to admission to the program, the faculty competencies, and the overall program outcomes. Recommendation 4-1: The National Defense Intelligence College should reformulate the learning outcomes of the courses of its MS&TI program in action verbs with empirical assessment measures.
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Recommendation 5: The National Defense Intelligence College should define and clearly state its strategy for assessing the teaching-learning process for each course in its MS&TI program consistent with the reformulated learning objectives. It should aggregate course-level assessments into a program-level assessment so that root causes of failures or opportunities for synergy and systemic improvement are identifiable.
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Recommendation 9: The National Defense Intelligence College faculty should craft program learning outcomes around the competencies of leaders and decompose these competency outcomes into learning objectives for each of the courses. For example, a competency of being able to direct group efforts could be developed through structured requirements in courses to lead group activities.
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Recommendation 12: The National Defense Intelligence College should develop a matrix of competencies and derived learning objectives against which to target development of future courses. Finding 13: The Intelligence Topics TEC was found to be incompletely covered, especially in the areas of biology and systems engineering.
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Finding 14: The critical core competencies that are not well addressed in the syllabi are Leadership and Integrity and Management Proficiency. Recommendation 14: Given the goal of graduating leaders for the science and technology intelligence community, the National Defense Intelligence College faculty should consider the program in light of leadership needs and offer students the option to participate in a capstone simulation war game, perhaps in place of the thesis requirement.
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S&TI community, we tend to have an advance technology bias and sometimes underestimate the impact of less advanced or commercially available technologies. Recommendation 16: The National Defense Intelligence College should add the study of two specific biases that science and technology intelligence analysis may be particularly susceptible to: authority bias and abhorrence bias.
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Recommendation 17: The National Defense Intelligence College faculty should add a session on disruptive technology forecasting and tracking to MST 613. Further, the NRC report Persistent Forecasting of Disruptive Technologies (NRC, 2010)
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Recommendation 18: The National Defense Intelligence College should include software design and simulation software in MST 655, with an emphasis on the use of these tools for the design and testing of new systems. Another area worth covering in the course would be autonomous and semi- autonomous weapons systems such as UAVs.
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Recommendation 22-2: National Defense Intelligence College students focusing in the Information Operations and Cyber concentration should be required to have an appropriate undergraduate level of education, or life skills associated with information operations and cyber, or training appropriate to the learning objectives. MST 680, Information Power and National Security.
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government, such as through the Joint Staff publications, that can be used to illustrate these issues. Recommendation 23: The National Defense Intelligence College should add to MST 680 materials such as the Joint Information Operations Planning handbook and doctrine manuals for electronic warfare.
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Recommendation 24-2: The National Defense Intelligence College faculty should consider segmenting the challenges and learning objectives associated with covering social media and parceling out the learning needs across several different courses. Finding 25: The backgrounds of the instructors for the Information Operations topics are critical to ensure that the material taught is deeper than a technical seminar from a vendor.
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Recommendation 28: The National Defense Intelligence College should incorporate a stronger background in science and technology in the Denial and Deception concentration area by requiring one or more additional courses that focus on S&T-based based deception. CONCLUSION The need for the NDIC's new degree program was found to be justified.
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National Defense Intelligence College (NDIC)
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"National Defense Intelligence College – School of S&T Intelligence." Presentation to the committee on May 13, 2011.
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Appendix
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