Evaluating an All-Ranks Military Staff Ride

Abstract

Outcomes for a staff ride to a Missouri Civil War battlefield by enlisted personnel and officers of the Army Reserve were evaluated. As expected, enlisted personnel and junior officers were much less likely to have participated in a staff ride previously. Nearly all soldiers expressed an interest in going on another all-ranks staff ride, and a statistically significant gain was achieved in expressed interest in American Civil War history. Most personnel agreed or strongly agreed with the concept of an all-ranks staff ride. There were few differences among officers and enlisted personnel in the success of the outcomes evaluated. However, learning seemed to be maximal among those with an intermediate level of previous staff ride experience.

Audiences and Providers of Distance Education

“…Furthermore, Army DL training remains embedded within a hierarchy of systems, especially larger social, political, and global systems (Saba 2007). Questions remained about soldier compensation for DL training and concerning the effectiveness of DL training for dealing with difficult ethical issues or taking away some of the relative respite from harder tours of duty offered by resident training, which often includes events such as staff rides (Schumm, Turek, and McCarthy 2003). DL appeared to give the soldier more time at home physically but not necessarily psychologically; some families may prefer the soldier be at home both physically and psychologically or absent in both ways.…”

A Comparison of Methods for Teaching Critical Thinking Skills for U.S. Army Officers

“…In response to these trends, the leadership of the 6th Brigade, 95th Division (U.S. Army Reserve) began conducting evaluations of traditional classroom education during annual training periods for the reserve component Command and General Staff Officer Course (CGSOC) (Schumm, Turek, and Jones 2003;Schumm et al 2004), military distance learning education , and an all-ranks staff ride conducted by the brigade headquarters (Schumm, Turek, and McCarthy 2003). In particular, we wanted to evaluate the role of student satisfaction with the students'military management education in terms of critical thinking and reasoning skills and how satisfaction with those skills was related to other educational outcomes, in the context of both traditional and distance education formats.…”