Security Design Semi-Synchronous Learning: The SOC 1440 Design Fundamentals Online Course at USSOCOM’s Joint Special Operations University

The author is a a course director for design education (contractor) at JSOU. The content below comes from the publicly available SOC 1440 course agenda and syllabus. SOC 1440 has run since the pilot course in April 2020. Since that pilot, over 14x iterations have occured at the time of writing. This article is part of an online educational outreach and social media focus for informing interested stakeholders and students of JSOU educational offerings:

This article explains what the “SOC 1440: JSOU’s Design Fundamentals Online” course is, who is eligible to attend it, and how it approaches security design education in a semi-synchronous, six-week online setting. This is a new course offering at JSOU since 2020 when the COVID pandemic shut down most all on-site and mobile courses across the Department of Defense and including the Joint Special Operations University (JSOU). Despite the austere learning environment rendered by the initial COVID lockdowns and restrictions, military units and individuals still needed to get immediate education on specific, often Special Operations Forces (SOF) peculiar topics and needs. In March 2020, the JSOU design team quickly developed the SOC 1440 security design fundamentals course for these educational demands in a pandemic context.

The initial settings: SOCOM enterprise had in large part due to COVID pandemic sought immediate distance-learning education on critical SOF topics including design. Additionally, JSOU due to direct guidance has to operate in telework status with all existing residence courses cancelled or postponed. While JSOU’ design team has long desired to establish a purely online distance design fundamentals course prior to the COVID situation, the immediate impact of the COVID lock-down caused a surge in SOCOM design distance learning demands. This demand did continue throughout the rest of 2020 into 2021, with the course now remaining in high demand. Future changes within the JSOU educational outreach strategy may turn SOC 1440 into a supporting module within other tailored education and research support.

Who is eligible to attend SOC 1440 as well as most other JSOU courses and education? JSOU exists to support the USSOCOM educational needs, to include international allied and partnered forces, U.S. government agencies (who work with SOCOM or within SOF-peculiar contexts), as well as the broader U.S. Department of Defense and other organizations. This means that any active, reserve, or national guard member may register for the SOC 1440 and attend it at no cost (being it is a remote, online course with no travel or lodging requirements for any student). The SOC 1440 Course Director prioritizes SOCOM, SOF-enablers, as well as other pre-coordinated SOF-unique students for seats in each course, with additional seats available for general purpose forces (DoD). International military can register for a SOC 1440, however they must first coordinate with the SOC 1440 Course Director not later than 60 days in advance in order to ensure any international tuition coordination is done. Other U.S. government agency members, government service employees, as well as some contractors can also attend JSOU courses including SOC 1440. These individuals should contact the JSOU registrar’s office as well as the SOC 1440 Course Director first to determine eligibility.

What does the SOC 1440 course accomplish in a COVID pandemic context for JSOU? This six week distance learning design fundamentals course permits a large range of students to include those in SOCOM that are also doing daily duties in a telework status to gain valuable basic design education. This is done through weekly “at-student’s own pace” design activities on the JSOU Blackboard platform and through weekly scheduled online Zoom discussions with JSOU design faculty. The SOC 1440 provides necessary online design fundamentals education and will provide future SOC 3440 basic design course students with valuable fundamental design knowledge of language, concepts, theory, history, and design practice. SOC 1440 features live and semi-synchronous inter-student design discourse online as well as student-submitted design drawing challenges which provide robust distance learning at the synthesis level.

Each SOC 1440 course spans a full six weeks and occurs in 2021-2022 on a planned ‘once a quarter’ frequency. Each class is capped at 25 students total, with students split into several design groups for the weekly group ZOOM meeting that lasts 60 minutes. During the 6-weeks, students are provided a weekly module consisting of 3-3.5- hrs. of self-paced and group learning and must attend a 1 – 1.5-hour live faculty facilitated discussion. (Total 4-5 hrs. per week). This 6-module semi-synchronous and live-facilitated online course examines, explores, and curates to gain new knowledge and applications in Design lexicon, Design methods, models, and Design tools. Each design week has a repeating pattern where students read a design article, access a design video (lecture, panel, TedX, or similar), listen to a design-themed podcast, and then engage with faculty and fellow students on the SOC 1440 Blackboard page in message boards answering weekly questions. Students also must comment on several other student messages so that cross-talk and discourse occurs online. Each week, design students also complete a physical design challenge (a drawing, writing, sculpture, or other type of product) and upload a digital image of the assignment to Blackboard. The weekly ZOOM facilitated live session has faculty engaging with the students on their design work.

SOC 1440 builds each week’s learning objectives upon one another, with cumulative terminal learning objectives being accomplished at the end of week six through synthesis of all the weekly content and activities. Everything is accomplished online and in a semi-synchronous manner so that students can tailor their time as they need to over the week. Students typically spend 6-8 hours each week on the assignments. The one required live ZOOM session lasts 60 minutes and must be attended by the entire SOC 1440 class each week. Below are the agenda details of the SOC 1440 course including each week’s content, assignments and design challenges.

1. (Week One SOC 1440) Students are given the following instructions:

a. Access the 1x design article below through Blackboard on the SOC 1440 site and read it in the next 7x days.

b. Access the 1x design video below through Blackboard or HTML link and watch it in the next 7x days.

c. Access the 1x design podcast at the SOC 1440 Blackboard site (or HTML link) and watch it in the next 7x days.

d. On the SOC 1440 Blackboard page, access the chat room discussion channel and contribute at least 2x original comments on any of the three design topics assigned this week, and also provide at least 2x comment replies to another student’s comment. Below in the assignment there are suggested comment topics you might consider for the chat room portion.

e. The JSOU design faculty will be monitoring and contributing to the student discussion all week, and also your unit leadership will be invited to login and contribute to the online learning discussions as well.

f. Complete this Week 1 physical design artistic challenge located on Blackboard. Students will follow the design exercise challenge and then upload their resulting project/drawing/construct to the portal in the Slide Share portion (each student labels their work in what will be a multi-student slide presentation each week). Week 1: Marx Brothers cabin scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFu0KyrNAAA. Challenge: Do a drawing and explain this scene using Groucho Marx as the main character for your explanation. What is Groucho doing? Why is the scene occurring as you see it? Avoid using words in your drawing- try to explain everything in pictures, not words. The week 1 design challenge learning objective: students will attempt to frame a complex scene and explain, not describe it.

Overall Terminal Learning Objective for week 1 for SOC 1440: Each week of SOC 1440 cumulatively builds upon the sequential SOC 3440 course learning objectives by providing each SOC 1440 student with initial design terminology, methodology, practice and group design discourse centered on that week’s SOC 3440 focus. For week 1, students gain familiarity with various civilian, commercial and military design methodologies as well as sub-disciplines. This creates the fundamental baseline that the JSOU family of design courses operate from (a mixed-methods, multidisciplinary approach to design) as well as what SOC 3440’s lesson 8 provides in greater detail. The SOC 1440 group message-board portion enables classroom discourse (online) to stimulate discussion and demonstrate individual student comprehension of the assigned design article/podcast/blog/video. The weekly online Zoom session hosted by JSOU for all SOC 1440 students will provide validation of student comprehension of the material provided, as well as enable individual student ‘question and answer’ engagements between JSOU design faculty and the class.

(Week Two SOC 1440) Students are given the following instructions:

a. Access the 1x design article below through Blackboard on the SOC 1440 site and read it in the next 7x days.

b. Access the 1x design video below through Blackboard or HTML link and watch it in the next 7x days.

c. Access the 1x design podcast at the SOC 1440 Blackboard site (or HTML link) and watch it in the next 7x days.

d. On the SOC 1440 Blackboard page, access the chat room discussion channel and contribute at least 2x original comments on any of the three design topics assigned this week, and also provide at least 2x comment replies to another student’s comment. Below in the assignment there are suggested comment topics you might consider for the chat room portion.

e. The JSOU design faculty will be monitoring and contributing to the student discussion all week, and also your unit leadership will be invited to login and contribute to the online learning discussions as well.

f. Complete this Week 2 physical design artistic challenge located on Blackboard. Students will follow the design exercise challenge and then upload their resulting project/drawing/construct to the portal in the Slide Share portion (each student labels their work in what will be a multi-student slide presentation each week). Abbott and Costello- map their logic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTcRRaXV-fg. Challenge: draw out a systems map of the famous Abbott and Costello scene “who’s on first.” Try to use systems concepts and logically map out the scene using whatever terms you desire, connections, graphics or icons to “map” the scene. Remember, the actual player names are the easy part- how might you “map” humor, misunderstanding, paradox, double-meanings, narratives, or anger? The week 2 design challenge learning objective: students will reflect on attempting to logically map out a comedy routine and consider the objective and subjective aspects of the scene. Humor, narratives, metaphors, and tacit concepts feature heavily in this video despite the objective aspects of the baseball game rules, player names, and attempts at deductive logic employed by Lou Costello trying to figure out the names. This scene illustrates how we can quickly “describe” systems in ways that lack the deeper meaning found in explanation; and how we prefer to map out systems that may be insufficient in conveying the overall content.

Overall Terminal Learning Objective for week 2 for SOC 1440: Each week of SOC 1440 cumulatively builds upon the sequential SOC 3440 course learning objectives by providing each SOC 1440 student with initial design terminology, methodology, practice and group design discourse centered on that week’s SOC 3440 focus. For week 2, students gain familiarity with systems theory and complexity theory as it applies in security contexts. Students will explore how complexity requires different language, metaphoric devices, and logic as well as an awareness that systemic thinking is quite different from analytical thought. This week is paired with SOC 3440’s lesson 2 that addresses these concepts in greater detail during the in-residence course. The SOC 1440 group message-board portion enables classroom discourse (online) to stimulate discussion and demonstrate individual student comprehension of the assigned design article/podcast/blog/video. The weekly online Zoom session hosted by JSOU for all SOC 1440 students will provide validation of student comprehension of the material provided, as well as enable individual student ‘question and answer’ engagements between JSOU design faculty and the class.

(Week Three SOC 1440) Students are given the following instructions:

a. Access the 1x design article below through Blackboard on the SOC 1440 site and read it in the next 7x days.

b. Access the 1x design video below through Blackboard or HTML link and watch it in the next 7x days.

c. Access the 1x design podcast at the SOC 1440 Blackboard site (or HTML link) and watch it in the next 7x days.

d. On the SOC 1440 Blackboard page, access the chat room discussion channel and contribute at least 2x original comments on any of the three design topics assigned this week, and also provide at least 2x comment replies to another student’s comment. Below in the assignment there are suggested comment topics you might consider for the chat room portion.

e. The JSOU design faculty will be monitoring and contributing to the student discussion all week, and also your unit leadership will be invited to login and contribute to the online learning discussions as well.

f. Complete this Week 3 physical design artistic challenge located on Blackboard. Students will follow the design exercise challenge and then upload their resulting project/drawing/construct to the portal in the Slide Share portion (each student labels their work in what will be a multi-student slide presentation each week). The Exploding Whale- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KTQtIBsum4. Challenge: draw what happened in this news clip. Attempt to draw out the strategy, the legacy system, what happened and why it did. You can use a combination of words and pictures however you wish to. The week 3 design challenge learning objective: in considering strategies and linear causality in military logic (ends-ways-means), how might this story about a dead whale on an Oregon beach help design students appreciate JPP limitations in logic? The designers will determine the failures in how the highway department approached a large dead whale the same way they approached rockslides (use explosives) and how that sort of institutional knowledge curation can become dangerous to rely on when encountering a challenge that is unlike anything in one’s institutional experience.

Overall Terminal Learning Objective for week 3 for SOC 1440: Each week of SOC 1440 cumulatively builds upon the sequential SOC 3440 course learning objectives by providing each SOC 1440 student with initial design terminology, methodology, practice and group design discourse centered on that week’s SOC 3440 focus. For week 3, students gain familiarity with how military design teams are established, their team composition and necessary working environment, as well as the different relationship between the design sponsor (and the design sponsor’s greater role) and the larger military organization. This week is paired with SOC 3440’s lesson 3 that addresses these concepts in greater detail during the in-residence course. The SOC 1440 group message-board portion enables classroom discourse (online) to stimulate discussion and demonstrate individual student comprehension of the assigned design article/podcast/blog/video. The weekly online Zoom session hosted by JSOU for all SOC 1440 students will provide validation of student comprehension of the material provided, as well as enable individual student ‘question and answer’ engagements between JSOU design faculty and the class.

(Week Four SOC 1440) Students are given the following instructions:

a. Access the 1x design article below through Blackboard on the SOC 1440 site and read it in the next 7x days.

b. Access the 1x design video below through Blackboard or HTML link and watch it in the next 7x days.

c. Access the 1x design podcast at the SOC 1440 Blackboard site (or HTML link) and watch it in the next 7x days.

d. On the SOC 1440 Blackboard page, access the chat room discussion channel and contribute at least 2x original comments on any of the three design topics assigned this week, and also provide at least 2x comment replies to another student’s comment. Below in the assignment there are suggested comment topics you might consider for the chat room portion.

e. The JSOU design faculty will be monitoring and contributing to the student discussion all week, and also your unit leadership will be invited to login and contribute to the online learning discussions as well.

f. Complete this Week 4 physical design artistic challenge located on Blackboard. Students will follow the design exercise challenge and then upload their resulting project/drawing/construct to the portal in the Slide Share portion (each student labels their work in what will be a multi-student slide presentation each week). The Arrival Language Scene- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIuMmAXz8PM. Challenge: ***Students do a drawing first before watching this video. Students will attempt to answer the following question: “Imagine a group of aliens landed on Earth and were trying to communicate with us. You are on that team and about to make first contact with them. You have a white board and markers, and the aliens are behind a thick glass barrier (due to different atmospheres, fear of disease, etc). Draw out how you would ask them “What is your purpose here on Earth?” After completing your first drawing that illustrates how you might go about doing this, watch the video. Next, consider your first drawing and make a second drawing. What did the video do from the movie “The Arrival” that perhaps changed how you wanted to go about this task? What did you draw differently in your second drawing, and why? The week 4 design challenge learning objective addresses reflective practice, language, meaning, and how design deconstructs so that we can disrupt and diverge from the set practices.

Overall Terminal Learning Objective for week 4 for SOC 1440: Each week of SOC 1440 cumulatively builds upon the sequential SOC 3440 course learning objectives by providing each SOC 1440 student with initial design terminology, methodology, practice and group design discourse centered on that week’s SOC 3440 focus. For week 4, students gain familiarity with multiple futures in design and how the traditional operational planning logic of ‘ends-ways-means’ with reverse-engineered “problem-solution” perspectives are insufficient. Designers will understand core scenario planning methods and how innovation requires increased experimentation, risk, and divergent thought. This week is paired with SOC 3440’s lesson 5 that addresses these concepts in greater detail during the in-residence course. The SOC 1440 group message-board portion enables classroom discourse (online) to stimulate discussion and demonstrate individual student comprehension of the assigned design article/podcast/blog/video. The weekly online Zoom session hosted by JSOU for all SOC 1440 students will provide validation of student comprehension of the material provided, as well as enable individual student ‘question and answer’ engagements between JSOU design faculty and the class.

(Week Five SOC 1440) Students are given the following instructions:

a. Access the 1x design article below through Blackboard on the SOC 1440 site and read it in the next 7x days.

b. Access the 1x design video below through Blackboard or HTML link and watch it in the next 7x days.

c. Access the 1x design podcast at the SOC 1440 Blackboard site (or HTML link) and watch it in the next 7x days.

d. On the SOC 1440 Blackboard page, access the chat room discussion channel and contribute at least 2x original comments on any of the three design topics assigned this week, and also provide at least 2x comment replies to another student’s comment. Below in the assignment there are suggested comment topics you might consider for the chat room portion.

e. The JSOU design faculty will be monitoring and contributing to the student discussion all week, and also your unit leadership will be invited to login and contribute to the online learning discussions as well.

f. Complete this Week 5 physical design artistic challenge located on Blackboard. Students will follow the design exercise challenge and then upload their resulting project/drawing/construct to the portal in the Slide Share portion (each student labels their work in what will be a multi-student slide presentation each week). Week 5 is “a new military threat” and how to design with the unexpected- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAGxy85R380 . Challenge: Watch the short clip which is a trailer for a documentary on the Earth Liberation Front, a real domestic terror group from the 1990s. While the ELF had a “no kill” code, we will project their movement into the future for this exercise. It is the year 2025, and due to economic changes as well as significant climate change, another future organization has taken some of the concepts/motives from the earlier ELF group (environmental terrorism) but has changed into a more violent form. The new ELF is decentralized, works primarily online using social media, and individual cells or ‘lone wolves’ of American young, often well-educated citizens are conducting acts of violent terrorism against the US, commercial enterprise, and local law enforcement as a new radical environmental terrorism organization. As designers, how would you draw out what this new challenge is, why it is occurring, and what military organizational, strategic or other transformations/reforms are needed. The week 5 design challenge learning objective addresses multiple futures and how a designer might construct one such atypical future in order to enable that military organization to plan in novel ways, within a new context, so that they can consider alternatives.

Overall Terminal Learning Objective for week 5 for SOC 1440: Each week of SOC 1440 cumulatively builds upon the sequential SOC 3440 course learning objectives by providing each SOC 1440 student with initial design terminology, methodology, practice and group design discourse centered on that week’s SOC 3440 focus. For week 5, students gain familiarity reflective practice as well as the more challenging notion of a ‘social construction of reality’ in design theory. The fundamentals of military sociology, paradigms, narratives, and how design tends to be critically reflexive as well as creatively disruptive will be addressed. This week is paired with SOC 3440’s lesson 6 that addresses these concepts in greater detail during the in-residence course. The SOC 1440 group message-board portion enables classroom discourse (online) to stimulate discussion and demonstrate individual student comprehension of the assigned design article/podcast/blog/video. The weekly online Zoom session hosted by JSOU for all SOC 1440 students will provide validation of student comprehension of the material provided, as well as enable individual student ‘question and answer’ engagements between JSOU design faculty and the class.

(Week Six SOC 1440) Students are given the following instructions: (final week)

a. Access the 1x design article below through Blackboard on the SOC 1440 site and read it in the next 7x days.

b. Access the 1x design video below through Blackboard or HTML link and watch it in the next 7x days.

c. Access the 1x design podcast at the SOC 1440 Blackboard site (or HTML link) and watch it in the next 7x days.

d. On the SOC 1440 Blackboard page, access the chat room discussion channel and contribute at least 2x original comments on any of the three design topics assigned this week, and also provide at least 2x comment replies to another student’s comment. Below in the assignment there are suggested comment topics you might consider for the chat room portion.

e. The JSOU design faculty will be monitoring and contributing to the student discussion all week, and also your unit leadership will be invited to login and contribute to the online learning discussions as well. Complete this Week 6 physical design artistic challenge located on Blackboard. Students will follow the design exercise challenge and then upload their resulting project/drawing/construct to the portal in the Slide Share portion (each student labels their work in what will be a multi-student slide presentation each week). Week 6: engaging with the strategic sponsor and presenting a design concept using unusual items to convey the narrative- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4OJoFlWVyY. Challenge: this movie is “The Martian” and chronicles the story of a scientist stranded on Mars accidentally and how NASA attempts to come up with a near-impossible rescue mission. They have never considered such a future, so all of their strategies and resources are completely unavailable or inappropriate for this contingency. The NASA leadership is under tremendous political demand as well as public outrage. The scientists are struggling to come up with COAs, consider extreme ideas, and convey them from scientific frames into non-scientific (political and bureaucratic leadership/decision-makers) frames quickly and effectively. How did this scene work out for this situation? If you could use the methods that the scientist used for explaining this rescue mission and wanted to use them to explain to a General Officer something from your unit, COCOM, or service national level or strategic demand (a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, a counter-drug cartel strategy for Mexico, a cyber-defense strategy against China, a counter-information strategy in Europe against Russia, etc), how would you do it? Either draw out your idea, or record it in video on your smart phone/device, or write out your idea (not a plan) as a script and upload it. The week 6 design challenge learning objectives cover how a design deliverable needs to be comprehensive, but also consider multiple frames and how to translate a design idea from one group of stakeholders to another. Metaphors, drawings, symbols, language, and new ideas all require deeper reflection in order to be meaningful not just for the design team but for the larger organization.

For more information on SOC 1440 and other JSOU courses, research, outreach, publications, conferences and tailored real-world applications:

Check out the JSOU portal located here: https://www.jsou.us.

JSOU hosts a YouTube channel where many of the SOC 1440 videos are located. Those videos are here at the ‘Think JSOU’ channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL7hOd0ihWzmJlga_Y4wCJg.

Contact the SOC 1440 course director by creating a student profile at the JSOU portal and clicking on the SOC 1440 course page.

If you run into issues, be sure to contact the JSOU Registrars for assistance. Again, for any international students- please coordinate at least 60 days in advance and contact JSOU International, JSOU Registrars, and the SOC 1440 Course Director as international students do need to address potential tuition requirements. USG, DoD, SOCOM students do not have this tuition requirement. The SOC 1440 Course Director prioritizes all students based on SOCOM needs and requirements for each course and will communicate with applicants if they are accepted or not accepted for a particular course.