Innovation in Education

The Innovation in Education column highlights new or updated praxes, pedagogies, and activities associated with 

learning and teaching in Professional Military Education. The column is meant to share high impact practices and 

novel methods of teaching according to the latest research from the field of educational science. We hope the 

column sparks new ways of engaging students in active learning practices that facilitate deep learning and transfer 

from the classroom to the command post and everything in between.

Joint Combined Warfighting School: 

Curriculum Revisions

Written by1

Stephen Irwin

This year, the Joint Forces Staff College (JFSC) celebrates its 75th Anniversary, and that makes it 

a great opportunity to reflect on the rapid evolution in the curriculum of the Joint and Combined 

Warfighting School (JCWS). As 2021 unfolds, the JCWS curriculum reflects rigor in Joint 

Professional Military Education (JPME) Phase II. The evolved curriculum better prepares 

student officers from every service to prevail in meeting the complex security challenges the 

Joint Force will face in the future.

Over the last two years, the JCWS reformed its curriculum to address the security challenges 

ahead. Its ten-week span of the curriculum is now sharpened to a fine point to better transform 

world-class students into master practitioners of the joint planning and execution of joint, 

interagency, and combined operations. Under the careful direction of the JFSC Commandant and 

the JCWS Director, the faculty and staff pooled their wisdom, experience, and energy to 

calibrate the curriculum to the new paradigm of globally integrated operations that will secure a 

lasting advantage in the context of Great Power Competition (GPC). Remarkably, the JCWS 

team accomplished this feat while sustaining uninterrupted operations and under the restrictive 

conditions of a global pandemic, without missing a class!

Guided by an emphasis on the student learning experience, joint acculturation, and teamwork, 

the JCWS team oriented the curriculum toward greater student-led learning, used American 

history as the foundation for America’s future, and added several rigorous student performance 

assessments. What makes this astounding is that they succeeded in performing this reformation 

entirely in the online environment—while outsmarting a global pandemic—and teaching every 

single class on-line.

1 The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official policy or position of Joint 

Forces Staff College, National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
In the ice-breaker exercise titled “PURPLE GUARDIAN,” students are thrust into a complex 

joint planning scenario involving a widespread terror attack on the U.S. mainland. From the first 

week of JCWS, students build their capacity to work well under pressure and with responders 

from international, federal, state, tribal, and local levels. Following the exercise, the first course 

of JCWS, titled “Joint Force Fundamentals” (JFF), commences. In JFF students examine the 

doctrinal joint functions in the context of the global GPC at play at the time of the United States’ 

inception. Faculty and students review the American Revolution, the Declaration of 

Independence, and the culminating victory in the War for Independence, the Battle of Yorktown. 

They also study the U.S. Constitution, which the U.S. officers have sworn to support and defend. 

As students observe the global competition now ongoing between the U.S., the People’s 

Republic of China, and the Russian Federation, they reexamine GPCs that have occurred over 

the last 300 years. Faculty and students also review the Civil War, WWI, WWII, the Cold War, 

Vietnam, the Balkan campaigns, the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Global War on Terror, 

and ongoing operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the world. As the JFF course concludes, 

students become familiar with the current National Security, National Defense, and National 

Military Strategies.

After mastering the content of JFF and the importance of unified action amongst the military 

services, stakeholder agencies of the U.S. government, allies, and international- and nongovernmental organizations, students begin to design a five-year operational approach to the 

Combatant Commander Campaign Plan by applying elements of operational design described in 

the newly revised Joint Publication 5-0. Students master the elements of operational design and 

hone their skills as joint practitioners during the second course of the JCWS curriculum, titled 

Strategic Campaign Design (SCD). During SCD, students learn collaboratively as members of a 

joint planning group. However, students must also create their visualization of the operational 

environment and operational approach. Doing so challenges and strengthens student imagination, 

creativity, industry, and confidence. Through rigorous application exercises, they learn to 

become highly effective leaders and contributors within joint, interagency, and combined 

planning teams. In the process they learn to think more critically, more operationally, and more 

strategically. Faculty further cultivate student’s capacity to work cooperatively in the third 

course of JCWS, “Integrated Contingency Planning” (ICP). In the course, students learn the 

seven steps of the Joint Planning Process (JPP), while creating a contingency plan to defend an 

allied nation from attack in the context of GPC.

In the last course of JCWS, Planning in Crisis (PIC), students execute the seven steps of the JPP 

under the severe time constraints of an emerging crisis. The crisis scenario takes place three 

years into the future and incorporates a substantial number of adversary actions below the level 

of conflict to create the basis for a complex attack on an ally. Under intense pressure, students 

must rapidly create a plan to defeat the attack. Their planning, informed by their meticulous 

efforts during ICP, thoughtfully considers the adversary, its great power supporter, other U.S. 

government stakeholders, allies, and international and non-governmental organizations. The

challenging capstone exercise solidifies student confidence in their ability to lead at the 

operational level of war and their ability to plan successful joint operations within the context of 

GPC. 
Over the ten-week experience that is JCWS, each student must successfully navigate a decathlon 

of ten rigorous performance assessments. The assessments include three examinations at the 

conclusion of each course, JFF, SCD, and ICP, a team research paper, two discussion board 

assessments, a written assessment consisting of a two-page written memorandum to the 

Secretary of Defense and the President, and three exercise participation assessments. Student 

success in the assessments hinges directly on their participation in seminar efforts, their one-onone relationship with their assigned faculty advisor, and their individual efforts.

The demanding ten-week experience serves to ensure that every student fulfills the JCWS 

Mission: “JCWS educates national security professionals to plan and execute Joint, Interagency, 

Intergovernmental, and Multinational (JIIM) operations. Graduates are critically thinking, 

operationally minded, skilled joint warfighters who can operationalize national, military, and 

theater security strategies into design-informed operational plans. Graduates have a primary 

commitment to JIIM teamwork, attitudes, and perspectives.” The attributes described in the

mission statement are central to the success of JCWS graduates as joint leaders in the future 

security environment. The evolutionary improvements embodied within the JCWS curriculum 

over the last two years were made possible only through the dedicated teamwork of JFSC and 

JCWS leadership, faculty, and staff.