I’m spending a little time at FOB Speicher in Tikrit, Iraq. I’m here to attend a weeklong course on Project Management. At the end of the course, I will have the opportunity to take the certification exam to become Project Management Professional (PMP). Can you sense my excitement? You’ll be happy to know that even in Iraq, Army classes are still the same. Generally, Army classes are structured at what I call the lowest common denominator level. The intent is to train everyone to the minimum standard. There are some courses out there that are not structured this way. But most are, including this one!
The instructor for the course is a contractor from a “Management Training Institute” that specializes in PMP exam preparation. The instructor and the company shall remain anonymous. On day 1, the instructor informed us that he would not use any overhead slides or PowerPoint presentations. His teaching method is one I’ve never before encountered. He teaches directly from the student workbook, otherwise known as the book of knowledge. In the workbook, each paragraph has blanks for missing words. So the instructor reads the script directly from the workbook and tells us what words to write in the blanks. He even spells some of the words for us. To top it off, he evens tells us to highlight some of these words with our highlighters so that they’ll stand out even more!
Do you remember Mad Libs? I feel like a writer for Mad Libs got a new job as an instructor. Gotta love Army training.