In this assignment I don't want the students doing a fill-in-the-blank midterm. The design was intended to accomplish two things: 1) find out if a student knows what the components of a collection plan are and how they relate to each other (from the intelligence question to the PIR, the target, and the collection method). In real life we would actually list a collection platform, but that tends to make the collection plans classified. For this reason we stop at listing the "type" of collection (MASINT, FISINT, etc.), and 2) is to ask that the students toss out doctrinal training, and fill-in-the-blanks, and see if they can creatively "see" the connections and then assemble (communicate) a moderately complex plan in a chart. This requires creativity and asks the students to exercise that portion of their intellect that is so important in intelligence, creativity and imagination, and do so with sound logic.

Some students, after completing this midterm confess confusion and vagueness about this assignment. Please understand that this assignment is designed as it is for a reason...not by accident. So to help you better understand what you are doing and why I offer this explanation of how this assignment will help you as students in this program and beyond: This is often perceived as a difficult assignment for some students. First, many students have a military enlisted background and have extended time in schoolhouses. They are given templates and formats and job tasks and asked to complete them. For those not in the military they do not have experience with intelligence job tasks, and especially collection tasks. Regardless of your background there is something important to be learned in this assignment.

I have had students who are unsure what a matrix is. A matrix is a rectangular arrangement of rows and columns of boxes. Into these boxes you can enter text and numbers -- like a spreadsheet. There is some sort of relationship between the rows and columns. You can subdivide some of these boxes to further break down information. Most collection matrices generally have requirements on one axis and collectors on another. At the end of these instructions is a grading matrix, that provides an example of what a matrix looks like. Yours might be far more complex.

You are welcome to display your matrix in any graphical fashion that you like. Any creativity you bring to this assignment in your layout should be there to help you make your point. Be sure to label your columns and rows clearly. You are welcome to use font size 8 in the matrix in order to include additional description or you run short on space. This assignment is due at the end of Week 4. Do not delay. I think you'll have fun with this assignment but you might end up doing a little research on the intelligence question you choose and you'll probably spend some time organizing the ideas so that you clearly communicate what you intend.

Each matrix should not extend beyond one page (which means that your mid-term will not be longer than 2 pages). This means you need to make a judgment about what targets you want to include on your matrix (some are probably not worthy of much consideration). You should also rate the effectiveness of that particular target-collection method combination (this evaluation will be relative and not perfect, but it is important to get a grasp on effectiveness of certain target-collection combinations).