Over the last two days, Army University Press hosted the Harding Project Workshop at the Combined Arms Center. One hundred participants, including the freshly minted Harding Fellows, branch journal editors, Army educators, and DoD partners such as DTIC and DMA, worked diligently to renew professional writing and discourse. Their efforts have set a promising path for the future of the Army’s journals.
The participants were split into four working groups: Stewardship, Modernization, Archives, and Education. Each group and its concentrated roster of subject matter experts was charged with refining the initial implementation plan from last fall's inaugural Harding Project Workshop. To prevent lateral barriers and silos, these groups not only focused on their assigned intent but also shared cross-cutting solutions with other working groups—ensuring a holistic approach to renewing the Army’s professional discourse landscape.
Lines of effort
Stewardship:
Stewarding the Army’s journals requires attention to regulations and policy. Amy University Press’ Colonel Todd Schmidt chaired this group that gathered journal editors and other stakeholders in the Army. Notably, this group included half of the new Harding Fellows, who built relationships with each other to share best practices. These Fellows—mostly captains—will complement existing journal staff. Coming out of the workshop, the Army will consider revising the language to AR 600-100 and updating the doctrine related to professional writing. Additionally, Army University Press will continue monthly meetings on topics like unifying submissions guidance. Finally, the Combined Arms Center plans to make these workshops an annual event.
Modernize:
The Army’s journals will migrate to a new web-first, mobile-friendly platform called the Line of Departure early this fall. Articles on the Line of Departure will format automatically to your screen size, print cleanly, and have an MP3 version for those who prefer to listen. Journals will retain their editorial independence and separate identities on the site, as branches need a place for internal debate about their issues. However, collocating all the journals will ease sharing articles between branches on common interest topics and allow people to discover articles of interest in other branch journals more easily. This modern platform will jumpstart the transition to web-first, mobile-friendly content while freeing editors to focus on editing rather than web hosting.
Repository:
Want to learn a new trick? Read an old book.
The Army will capture and store all the Line of Departure’s content through a partnership with the Defense Technical Information Center. This working group focused on the technical aspects of this collaboration, building a common understanding of how the articles are transmitted, enriched with metadata, stored, and searched. Ultimately, the goal is for this repository to host and make searchable all 140,000 pieces of content published by the Army since 1888.
Education:
The education working group explored how the Professional Military Education enterprise could integrate the Army’s journals and increase soldiers' writing skills. Educators from every echelon of PME concluded with several approaches. One is simple guidance for instructors and faculty to focus on fostering professional discourse within the classrooms appropriate to their level, within their specific constraints, and how they best see fit. For example, the Noncommissioned Officer and Warrant Officer courses are not long enough for a course-long publishable capstone assignment. However, an instructor can mentor students weekly and prepare them for a formal debate with Army journal underpinnings at the end of the course. Integrating the Army’s journals into the academic sphere is crucial for the Army to learn and grow. The guidance is simple, but the outcomes are limitless.
Keep it going
Leaders at all levels and across every formation must encourage soldiers to learn from reading the Army’s journals, embolden them to think differently and empower them to contribute to the Army’s body of knowledge.
After a training rotation or deployment, start a book review or unit writing program to capture ideas and best practices. Foster thoughtful discussions or host idea presentations and debates. Incorporate journal articles as part of the memorandum of instruction for your local promotion and competition boards. Lastly, make sure you read the Harding Project’s unit guide to professional discourse, which is set to be released near the end of the summer as a Military Review special issue.
Army University Press, the branch journals, the academic institutions, and partners are bringing the force closer to a web-first, mobile-friendly professional discourse platform and integrating the Army’s body of knowledge into the institutions—so what?
Professional discourse links leaders to win wars by accelerating Army-wide adaptation and evolution—this is how we outpace the competition.
I like what was written here about education. It is a good idea to get advice throughout a course utilizing journal articles along the way.
I have tried to start a writing culture in my organization since I took responsibility in December. However, I am meeting much resistance. Any ideas for implementing or writing program at the unit level? Especially when there is little to no interest.