This title summarizes discussions with over 450 Army officers (lieutenants through colonels) about leader development in Army units. These discussions revealed that the type and extent of leader development activities vary greatly across units, but that they are generally informal and most heavily influenced by the unit commander. The authors conclude with suggestions on how the Army school system can improve leader development.

Evaluated the effectiveness of the Common Core-the first phase of the U.S. Army's system for developing critical thinking skills in its officer corps-and the extent of differences among distributed, resident, and mixed-delivery course venues.

The U.S. Army s Command and General Staff School offers its Advanced Operations Course (AOC) for junior field-grade officers using both traditional resident instruction and a model referred to as blended distributed learning (BDL). This report assesses the effectiveness of AOC-BDL based on student and graduate surveys and identifies best practices for BDL from empirical research and case studies.