Learning and teaching have quickly gone virtual due to coronavirus: schools, universities, museums, libraries, even zoos and gyms are delivering virtual learning experiences. The need for virtual (and fast) applies to foreign language learning programs as well. Out of necessity, we are all caught up in quickly finding solutions now that we likely view as temporary. However, the current situation presents a unique opportunity for U.S. Intelligence Community and national security leaders of foreign language programs to perhaps reimagine their programs entirely through the lens of virtual instruction powered by technology. They can assess what works and what does not and new ways to apply solutions. Instead of returning to status quo once the current crisis is over, they will likely discover that optimizing for virtual teaching and learning with robust technology should be integrated into a new “normal” not by necessity but by choice.
The need for a multi-lingual workforce, particularly for intelligence and national security, is not new. But neither are the challenges that the nation has struggled with over the years to create and sustain those skills. Requirements for specific languages may change (fluctuating through the years from German in World War II to Pashtu more recently) but the need for us to communicate and interact with others in another language endures; languages are hard to acquire and easy to lose; not enough time and too many other priorities are always a challenge; threats remain complex, perhaps increasingly so. What is different is the rapid advances of today’s technology that newly make new things possible – even before the current pandemic. Coronavirus has put a spotlight on what technology can already do. As we practice social distancing that has fully permeated the way we work, study, and live, it is thanks to technology that we can continue many of our daily activities, albeit from afar, via our computers, tablets, and phones.
U.S. intelligence and national security organizations should envision what their language program might look like if it were created anew with the mandate to optimize first for technology and virtual learning. Not replace humans but push the bounds of what technology can do first. How would those perennial challenges mentioned above be met when solutions could arguably take shape outside the current constraints of “that is the way we have always done it”? Could organizations better ensure that skills once acquired are sustained? What new or additional outcomes might be achieved as a result of using technology as the backbone for a language program and then leveraging the human for what the human does best?
What immediately comes to mind:
- Technology increases instructor resources and languages taught by remotely drawing upon talent from across the country. It also better enables anytime, anywhere learning.
- Technology enhances the ability of instructors to quickly create lessons, manage classes, and teach to a dispersed workforce. Could one even go so far as to envision an entire virtual schoolhouse?
- The technology exists today that can enable mass customization at scale in supporting the sustainment of language skills on the job. Lessons can be delivered virtually on a regular basis to large groups on topics and content relevant to their work.
- Virtual reality technology enables real-life simulations where learners use language skills in the same way they would when engaged in their actual job duties. It is not hard to envision in-country language immersion experiences as completely virtual.
- Technology better enables an organization to quickly identify and mobilize the right skill set for the right mission at hand, track language learning activities, monitor language proficiency levels.
Leaders responsible for language learning programs have before them a forced social experiment that gives opportunity to try new things, possibly in new ways, with an eye toward reimagining their programs, or at the very least to make those programs more resilient to future disruptions. This opportunity should not be allowed to slip by.
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