Basic military trainees no longer have to carry around clipboards and bulky study materials in hard copy. On Sept. 13, 2022, Basic Military Training (BMT) program completed their transition to a digital campus by offering Memre's adaptive learning solution on over 500 Apple ipads issued to all Airmen in their first week of training.
The two-year, $4 million initiative by BMT completed the transition to a digitally-connected campus by enabling online delivery of the curriculum. This expansion of communications infrastructure lays the foundation for a BMT Smart Campus. It supports the 750 mobile devices currently used by military training instructors and staff, as well as the 7,000 tablets for trainee use.
With that final distribution, all eight BMT line squadrons at the 737th Training Group at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas, are now delivering training curriculum to Airmen and Guardians using Memre's adaptive learning application. The solution is delivered to thousands of devices within the IBM MaaS360 program - a Unified Endpoint Management solution that manages and protects mobile devices and apps with secure access to military resources.
BMT digitized all nine of its formal courses for Memre's adaptive learning platform. Using a cognitive science-based algorithm and a personalized learning path suited to Airmen and Guardians' unique needs, Memre builds the critical knowledge, mindset, skills and abilities addressed in BMT. Airmen and Guardians study at their own pace, guided by Memre in short practice sessions, distributed over a period of time, for better memory retention. Memre's adaptive AI adjusts the length, frequency and difficulty of content for each trainee, based on their unique experience and skill levels. Mobile devices enable instructors and trainees to interact with Memre hands-on for Basic Military Training, meeting their learning needs anytime, anywhere, while on campus.
When designing study materials, BMT employed curriculum experts who embedded a variety of graphics and videos in the study modules to improve learning effectiveness. Instructional designers developed review questions at the end of each module that assess the knowledge of trainees as they progress through the study material. Memre user analytics allow instructors to monitor student performance in real-time and take corrective actions to improve performance. The platform enhances knowledge retention for mission-critical thinking and actions to be successfully deployed in the field.
Memre's adaptive learning platform not only provides an individualized training application for trainees, instructors, and curriculum developers, but also enables agile content development and delivery, including direct two-way communication between instructors and students.
Memre acts a personal tutor that monitors students as they are learning, assesses the progress they are making in each area, and that provides actionable insights in order to build strong and stable memories for long term knowledge retention.
“Transforming the way we learn is one of the Secretary of the Air Force’s top priorities for BMT. It all starts at BMT, and we have an obligation to bring that to them in the classroom.” said Jim Steele, Operations Flight Chief, 737th TRG. Speaking of trainees, he added “They grew up in a digital world since they can remember. Even in high school, they learn online. Young adults learn differently because they have a huge desire to consume info quicker and we have the obligation to do that for them,”
Training with Memre on mobile devices transformed the way trainees study and retain material. Continuous trainee feedback provides new ideas to expand the use cases for mobile learning that will continue to drive the transformation.
“Using my iPad allows me to access checklists for evaluations, teachable moments and reviewing regulations,” said Master Sgt. John Davis, Military Training Instructor, 737th Training Group. “I was a 'clipboard MTI' and have adapted to use technology to make my life easier.”
Learn more ways that Memre enables mission-critical training for the military.