Defense Language Institute

MEMO
Name: Department Chair

From: Nina Gill

CC: Manager Faculty Development and Manager Curriculum Department

Date: August, 30th 2017

Re: Training the Faculty (teaching, curriculum and testing)

Comments:

As we know that Defense Language Institute has moved on to a higher proficiency goal for the students, we
want to see if any instructional design model is being followed to achieve this goal. In my observation, there is
no set model that DLI follows, parts of ISD model are being followed leaving out many crucial components. A
major issue in several departments is the designing and implementation of the curriculum. I also see that
teachers and students do not have all the recourses that would give the desired results.

A major issue is the IT support, there are very simple things that have led to unproductive instructional hours,
which include links not working in the lessons for the students and the teaching team, smart board malfunction
and sometimes servers being down. Recently DLI switched to the Mac which further aggravated the IT support
issue. Most of the teachers were not properly trained to maneuver the Mac side. Ultimately teachers were not
fully prepared as they went for their regular classes as result student frustration was building up.

Due to insufficient IT support teachers waited several days to deliver a productive lesson and the problem still
persists. For the past five years, there are several mistakes in the curriculum in spite of various faculty members
working on it. The major issue that has been brought up by several graduating classes are the instructions and
content. Unit quizzes are another major issue, there is very little correlation between the curriculum and the
testing material resulting in demotivation of students especially the ones who are struggling in the course.

Since there are no ongoing evaluations, formative or summative by the students just an end of course feedback.
Another important factor which needs immediate attention is, even after the feedback there are no steps taken
to revise the instructions and the problem still exists.

I would highly recommend to follow the Kemp Model although there are pros and cons to this model, I feel it
will still improve the DLPT scores even with the cons it has.

Special attention should be given to providing recourses to the entire faculty and students which are crucial.
This includes training from the IT department on MAC, prioritizing the faculty who are not native to technology,
fixing links in the lessons that are not working, fixing smart boards that are not working and addressing issues as
they come. Training for the Faculty in developing and implementing the curriculum and coordination with the
testing department.

An effort should be made Summative and Formative evaluations by the students after a unit is finished followed
by revising the instructions.

There are some limitations with this model which will be manpower and funds. Keeping these two factors in
mind DLI can work around in allocating funds by prioritizing where the need is most through needs assessment
process.

Nina Gill