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The loop just south Chapter 2: Post-Cold War (PCW) Missions Framework and Its Two Pillarsof Adams (12 October, 2003)
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In the post-Cold War era, reform efforts must restructure and empower the IC to address the new and changing needs of the United States. The key issue in reform is prioritizing the correct set of IC missions given
the needs of the country and the limited resources at hand. The Clinton administration has issued a set of general guidelines for the community, but much remains to be clarified. The growing need for support to
military operations (SMO) and the increasing pressure on the IC to expand into new areas such as the environment and health are stretching resources beyond their limit and endangering the IC's ability to adequately
perform its duties.
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Presidential Decision Directive 35 (PDD-35), a still-secret document, defines the existing missions framework. It declares support to military operations (SMO) as the most important mission of the intelligence
community,(1)
but also specifies nuclear proliferation, narcotics trafficking, terrorism, and global crime as other important concerns. In accordance with the existing framework, a sizable portion (83%) of
the current IC budget goes to the Department of Defense (DoD), appropriated for SMO.(2)
Unfortunately, the breadth of missions given to the IC has stretched its resources to the breaking point and beyond,
and budget and personnel reductions have made this problem even more acute. The existing framework does not properly address these concerns and must therefore be modified to fit the current international situation.
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2.2 Diplomacy and Defense: Balancing Support to Policy-makers
(SPO and Support to the Military (SMO))
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The Snyder Commission holds the following principle as the basis for all its intelligence reform work: While the existing framework adequately protects the needs of the battlefield commander, it neglects to address
the equally important needs of the diplomat and the high-level official who will be the first line of defense for America's national interests. The needs of such policy-makers are met by what is termed national
intelligence, whose scope is broader than the tactical military intelligence required in SMO. The military is essentially deployed only as a means of achieving an end that cannot be achieved by normal diplomatic
means (or at least this is the reasoning of those who order the military into action). In this light, SMO and support to senior policy officials who make US foreign policy (SPO) are inextricably linked, and both
must be addressed with equal vigor to have a successful and efficient IC.(3)
The National Security Act of 1947 created the IC to provide the President and other national consumers with the information that they
need to make informed decisions about world events and to warn them of impending crises. These basic roles must not be forgotten, and therefore SPO must stand on equal ground with SMO. Subordinating one to the other
would dangerously hamper the ability of our country to protect its interests.
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Although today's international environment is still rapidly changing, several basic trends in US foreign policy reveal a clear definition of American objectives in the coming years. The most important of America's
long-term national interests is:
Preventing the rise of a major hostile power and a new Cold War.(4)
Other critical national interests include:
Ensuring the permanence of our alliances and the survival of our allies.(5)
Countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Maintaining military and technological superiority.
Additional national interests include:(6)
Countering terrorism.
Preventing a major conflict among other nations.
Protecting the national economy from disruption.
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In order to secure the balance of SPO and SMO required in Section 2.2 and to better protect the national interests outlined in Section 2.3, the IC needs a new, post-Cold War (PCW) missions framework. This PCW
framework is divided into three tiers and has two main pillars. The two main pillars are:
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Pillar I:Support to Policy Officials (SPO), which includes support to all high-level policy-makers up to and including the President.
Pillar II: Support to Military Operations (SMO), which includes tactical support to the battlefield commander.
These two pillars are fixed because of their inherent importance to America's national
interests. The IC performs its most critical missions within these two broad pillars, so changing them or the relative balance between the two would endanger our vital interests.
The three tiers help
prioritize specific missions of the IC. Although the specific missions presented below are not an exhaustive list of IC missions, they are given as examples of the primary threats found in each tier.
Tier A (High Priority):
Nonproliferation, Counterterrorism, and Global Crime and Counternarcotics. Tier A missions are critical and imminent dangers to national security. Notably, they are all transnational in nature.
Tier B (Medium Priority):
Economic Intelligence and Information Warfare. Tier B missions are developing threats to national security or possible future intelligence interests. Interestingly, these missions have both offensive and defensive natures.
Tier C (Low Priority): Environmental Intelligence, and Health and Humanitarian Operations Intelligence. Tier C missions do not pose immediate dangers to the
United States, and under normal circumstances can be adequately supported through open-source collection.
Each of the three tiers should receive resource allocations according to its place in the hierarchy. When
national security demands additional funding for higher priority or "higher-tiered" missions, funding for lower priority missions should be reduced or eliminated as needed. In addition, the missions
themselves can be reassigned to higher or lower tiers as their importance emerges or diminishes with time or world events.
The PCW framework allows the IC to adequately protect current national interests
while simultaneously maintaining the flexibility to redirect resources if the IC needs to be retasked to counter new threats. It gives policy-makers in particular (and consumers in general) great discretion as to
how the community uses its limited resources to provide relevant intelligence. Using this PCW framework as a basis, the Snyder Commission has derived appropriate recommendations which, if implemented, will support a
cohesive and integrated IC.
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Coherence or interest: Which is most important in online multimedia learning?
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The coherence principle states that all non-essential information in multimedia messages should be eliminated to minimise demands on cognitive resources. This assertion has been empirically verified in controlled
laboratory studies with learners who have little prior knowledge and limited interest in the domain of instruction. It has not been investigated, however, whether the coherence principle generalises to real learning
environments. In this study, 104 students from year 10, year 11, and first year university viewed either a concise or an extended online multimedia treatment on stellar spectra. The extended treatment included
additional interesting information about the formation of black holes, galaxy collisions and the observation of dark matter. Following the multimedia, participants completed a retention and transfer test that
covered only the material common to both treatments. Results showed students in both treatment groups achieved similar performance. This suggests that in authentic learning settings, interest may mitigate the
effects of the coherence principle. Difficulties involved in measuring differences in learning within the constraints of a real learning environment are also addressed.
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There is a long-standing debate surrounding what should and should not be included in instruction. Some argue that interesting material is essential for learning, even if only of tangential relevance. Others contend
that instruction should consist solely of information related to the learning outcomes.
Recent multimedia research has made a significant contribution to this debate in the form of the coherence principle:
Students learn better when extraneous material is excluded rather than included. Extraneous material competes for cognitive resources in working memory and can divert attention from the important material, can
disrupt the process of organising the material, and can prime the learner to organise the material around an inappropriate theme. (Mayer, 2001, p.113)
The opposing viewpoint claims interest plays a key role in
allocating limited cognitive resources, making it essential for learning (Schank, 1979). For example, Mitchell (1993) proposed that a learner's interest could be caught and held during instruction to improve
retention. This purpose could be well served by including highly interesting but unimportant information, often called 'seductive details', in instruction (Schraw & Lehman, 2001).
This paper reports a
preliminary empirical investigation of these two viewpoints in an authentic online learning setting with students with three levels of prior knowledge.
Previous research
In multimedia research to date, the coherence principle has received the most empirical support. Multimedia on the formation of lightning storms produced better performance on transfer tests when seductive
details were excluded rather than included (Mayer, Heiser & Lonn, 2001). In this case the irrelevant material involved a story about a football player struck by lightning on the playing field. However, even
relevant equations have been shown to have a detrimental effect when the goal of instruction is a strong qualitative understanding of scientific processes (Mayer & Jackson, 2005).
Empirical support for
multimedia principles in laboratory settings, however, does not guarantee applicability to real learning environments. Tabbers, Martens and van Merrienböer (2004) reported a study in which they investigated the
modality and cueing effects in an authentic learning setting. The modality effect states that verbal information should be presented as narration rather than on screen text, to facilitate learning (Sweller et al.,
1998). The cueing effect suggests that learning is enhanced when visual cues in an animation help link images to their associated narration (Kalyuga, 1999). Although these effects had been well established in
previous studies, Tabbers et al. failed to replicate the results in a classroom environment. Their study found only a slight cueing effect and even a reverse modality effect. This suggests that the translation of
multimedia principles into effective practice is not trivial.
One might expect the coherence principle to be particularly difficult to observe in authentic settings. In a laboratory environment, researchers
oversee the experimental procedure, ensuring learners concentrate on the instructional message. In contrast, while viewing online multimedia from home, learners are under no obligation to pay attention to the
instruction. Inspiring interest in the multimedia would therefore be more important in real learning settings than in controlled laboratories.
Research on the coherence principle in multimedia environments
grew out of investigations of the 'seductive details effect' in text based learning (e.g. Harp & Mayer, 1998). Early studies found that the inclusion of seductive details in texts resulted in lower performance
on retention tests (for a review, see Schraw & Lehman, 2001). However as Goetz & Sadoski (1995) argued, the findings were not as conclusive as was claimed. Methodological confounds and conflicting results
signalled the need for further research to establish the effect of seductive details on learning.
Prior knowledge
A rationale for the
coherence principle is provided by cognitive load theory (Sweller, van Merrienböer & Pass, 1998). This theory considers the implications for instructional design of humans' limited capacity to process novel
information in working memory (Miller, 1956). Three types of cognitive load are proposed: intrinsic, germane, and extraneous. It is difficult to alter intrinsic load because it is determined by the complexity of the
material to be learned. Germane cognitive load refers to the mental effort required for schema formation, which is therefore essential for learning. In contrast, extraneous cognitive load is the additional mental
effort required to deal with poorly designed instruction. From this perspective, extra interesting but irrelevant information constitutes extraneous cognitive load, which therefore should be eliminated from
instruction.
To test this hypothesis, it was important to have students with a range of prior knowledge. Students with too much prior knowledge might not experience cognitive overload regardless of the amount of
extraneous information. In contrast, those with too little prior knowledge might be overwhelmed simply by intrinsic cognitive load.
Objective
This study adds to the body of knowledge on multimedia learning in two ways. First, it extends previous research on the coherence principle by investigating the effect of seductive details in an authentic
online learning environment. Second, the effect is explored using the same instructional materials with students with three different levels of prior knowledge.
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