INA 4301

Advanced Intelligence Analysis: How to Think In Complex Operating Environments

4301 Advanced Intelligence Analysis: How to Think In Complex Operating Environments (3-0). This course focuses the analyst on how to think, not what to think, in order to foster critical thoughts and enhance the students cognitive performance. It is modeled on the Socratic method of instruction and offers concepts on advanced thinking that are applicable to all work environments, but particularly to the intelligence analysis enterprise. Students discover how to decompose an analytical problem into its fundamental elements. The output of this process includes five principal kinds of observables for collection and analysis: technical, functional, cultural, situational, and biometric. Students also learn how to write effective requirements and observables. They further learn how to re-aggregate data into information and to synthesize information into knowledge, thereby creating actionable intelligence.

Units: 3.0