Ground is Good
The Ins and Outs of Effective Ground School Instruction
By William Dubois, guest writer
Learning to operate the airplane is only a small part of learning how to fly. There’s also aerodynamics, airspace, avionics, communications, navigation, medical factors, regulations, risk management, systems, weather, weight and balance, and much, much more.
In short, much of learning to fly is done on the ground.
Traditionally, these ground studies were part of a ground school — a dedicated classroom environment with professional instructors following a set training curriculum. In today’s world, many colleges and universities still provide dedicated ground classes, but in the flight school environment, ground instruction is often a mix of asynchronous online learning and flight instructor responsibility.
The Flight Instructor as the Ground Instructor
While certificated ground instructors still exist (see the “Getting Grounded” sidebar), all certificated flight instructors are, in fact, ground instructors. If you are a CFI, your certificate grants you all of the privileges of a ground instructor.
But are you a good one?
Ground instruction is uniquely different from in-flight instruction, and being an effective ground instructor requires more advanced prep than in-flight instruction. The good news is that it’s a largely one-time effort, and an added benefit is that — done correctly — you’ll have better-prepared learners sharing the flight deck with you. They will be learners who pick up on the flight lessons more quickly and with a higher degree of safety.
Elements of Effective Ground Instruction
Because of the incredible breadth of knowledge that makes up a course of ground study, the organization of ground lessons is essential. That said, there’s no single way to organize the knowledge areas. While much of the knowledge requirements for pilots comes from Title 14, Code of Federal Regulations (14 CFR), parts 61, 65, and 91, there’s no need to organize your material in the same way that it appears in the regs — in fact, it may be detrimental to do so. The regulations are organized in a certain manner for legal reasons, not educational clarity.
Start by making a master list of the primary subject areas you will teach. This master list is your training syllabus — the broad sweep of the material you will cover, for instance, private pilot ground knowledge. This list should include all the various sub-topics that need lessons, each of which, in turn, will need a brief lesson plan. (More about those in a second.)
Once you have your master list, step back and use your experience and mastery of the knowledge to arrange the subjects to be taught in a way that makes logical sense to you. Even if you are designing your ground lessons as a follow-on to a pre-packaged course of self-study, it is still possible to rearrange the packaged content to better reflect your overall course of flight instruction.
The organization of the material should reflect your training philosophy. Of course, some study elements serve as prerequisites for others; for instance, it would be difficult to teach a learner about the horizontal component of lift if they had not previously been introduced to the four forces of flight. Ideally, ground lessons should be integrated with flight lessons and share common objectives, letting your learner connect theory with application.
As with the regulations, while the order of the appropriate Airman Certification Standards (ACS) document doesn’t necessarily dictate an appropriate teaching order, a review of the aligned ACS provides for excellent calibration between the core subjects to be taught and the associated risk management tasks, while additionally assuring that no test subject areas are overlooked.
As to lesson plans, they don’t need a lot of detail, especially if you are creating them for your own use. If you can read it out loud like a bedtime story, you did it wrong. Instead, it should be a succinct outline. The purpose of the lesson plan is to keep you on track, like a checklist. (Exception to the rule: if you are a chief instructor creating lesson plans for other instructors, more detailed instructions may be required.)
And here’s a tip: If you ever wish your student knew something in the air, that’s your cue that you should have covered the topic in ground sessions first.
Tips for Being a (Highly) Effective Ground Instructor
A well-thought-out training syllabus with easily deployable lesson plans is your primary strategy for effective ground instruction. But how you use those tools is where the rubber meets the runway. Here are some tips for using those tools to be a highly effective ground instructor:
- Go group — Ground learning is more effective as a group event than it is in a one-to-one setting. The learners benefit from each other’s questions and perspectives, and this remains true even if all the learners aren’t 100% matched in their flight progression — the more experienced students become mentors to the less experienced. Group ground sessions are also a more efficient use of your time, and they can be logged with the same impact as individual ground instruction.
- Teaching isn’t telling — It’s important to note that ground instruction and lectures are not the same thing. Don’t just stand in front of your students and lecture. Instead, you are a tour guide whose job is to show people around your world.
- Watch your language — be mindful to never use a word or term you’ve not yet introduced and minimize using acronyms with primary students. With more advanced students, define any acronym at least two times before deploying it regularly. It takes time to learn a new language, and your students are learning “aviation speak,” a strange new language you’ve been fully fluent in for so long you might not even give it a second thought without conscious effort.
- “Dumb” it down — Keep concepts simple at first. For instance, don’t start an airspace lesson by drawing the “mushroom forest” on a whiteboard. Instead, back up and deploy an analogy to explain that airspace — like state lines on a map — are real boundaries but are invisible in the physical world. And that, like with states, the local “laws” vary with the jurisdiction. Then proceed into the categories of enroute airspace vs. airport airspace and build from there. And fer cryin’ out loud, don’t start spewing out weather minimums until your learners have mastered the basic lay of the land.
- Energy management, classroom style — Keep your ground instruction sessions short. Don’t spend too much time on any one subject. Consider several “bite-sized” mini-lessons in each session. Be lively and animated. Provide frequent breaks. Aviation is exciting, there is no reason for a ground session to be boring.
- Minimize words via pictures — Don’t rely on words if visuals can tell the story better. Use models and visual aids, including electronic aids such as animated videos, to help learners grasp complex concepts more quickly.
- Deploy “war stories” — Your experience is pure gold. Use your personal real-world experiences to illustrate the concepts that you are teaching. War stories provide a real-world framework for theoretical knowledge, turbocharge understanding, and set the stage for accelerated application.
- Utilize learner “read-backs” — As a cross-check that your teaching is being effective for student learning, frequently ask for “read-backs” from your learners. Have them re-state, in their own words, the key aspects of the lesson, so you can ensure that what they have gotten out of it was what you intended for them to learn. This not only ensures that your lessons are being effectively taught, but it also helps you hone your teaching skills.
Teaching with an Asynchronous ‘Partner’
There are many self-paced asynchronous home-study ground school products, and many of them are high quality. However, there are stumbling blocks that can reduce their effectiveness as a tool. Learners often deploy them at the end of their day when they are tired, and as there is no proctor monitoring, there is nothing to prevent “tune-out.” The screen time to learning ratio is many times far from impressive.
An even greater potential danger is that, with no instructor present to ensure that proper learning is taking place, there can be significant holes in the learner’s core knowledge; and worse yet, there is no oversight to prevent incorrect learning. An additional weakness of asynchronous products is that there is no quick mechanism for students to ask questions or get clarification — short of the pause-rewind-relisten method.
There is nothing inherently wrong with asynchronous learning, and it can be an excellent force-multiplier for a small instructional staff. But, if you use asynchronous learning with your students, be sure to constantly review assigned lessons with them in person to ensure the lesson was internalized as intended rather than relying on quiz scores from the product, which doesn’t always reflect learner understanding.
Ground Matters
Some flight instructors treat ground school as an afterthought or something that can be delegated to a pre-packaged course of home study with no effort on the part of the flight instructor. That’s doing discredit to your learners, and it makes your job harder than it needs to be.
Consider one of the largest successful outputs of new aviators in history — the training programs our country developed during World War II. Even with the urgency of a global war, pilot candidates received 225 hours of ground school to 60 hours of flight time, nearly a 4-to-1 ratio.
Do you think that there is less ground knowledge to master in current times? Or more?
If three-quarters — or more — of the job of teaching learners how to fly happens on the ground, then effective flight instruction must include effective ground instruction.
Getting Grounded (In a Good Way)
Like the flight instructor certificate, the ground instructor certificate is a separate piece of plastic. And — like aviation maintenance technician and aircraft dispatcher certificates — it does not necessarily require the holder to have a pilot certificate. It is a stand-alone teaching credential that empowers its holders to teach ground classes, endorse candidates for knowledge tests, and — if senior enough — even provide training to flight instructor candidates.
Additionally, like many other FAA certificates, there are multiple ratings that are achievable. The certificate is issued with a basic rating that grants the holder the authority to teach ground school for private pilot and below and sign off candidates for those knowledge tests. The advanced ground instructor rating gives the instructor the authority to teach commercial subjects and sign off candidates for the commercial knowledge test. And finally, the instrument ground instructor rating confers the authority to teach instrument ground and sign off candidates for the instrument knowledge test.
Logically enough, getting a ground instructor certificate is a ground operation. It requires passing a series of knowledge tests, generally ranging from a minimum of two tests up to a maximum of four tests, depending on what ratings are sought. The basic requirements are to be at least 18 years of age and be English proficient. All ground instructor candidates must pass a knowledge test on the Fundamentals of Instructing (unless they already hold a CFI certificate, are currently certified as a teacher at the 7th-grade level or higher, or are employed as a teacher at an accredited college or university), and pass specific knowledge tests for each rating desired. These are stand-alone knowledge tests, not the same knowledge tests that airmen need to pass as part of their certification. No endorsement is required to take any of these written tests.
The privileges and limitations of ground instructors are codified in 14 CFR sections 61.211 to 61.217 and further expanded upon via several letters of interpretation. Ground instructor privileges include providing basic aeronautical instruction and written test prep, providing the required pre-solo and solo cross-country ground training for student pilots, and endorsing logbooks to reflect ground training. Ground instructors can additionally provide the required ground training for flight reviews at the certificate level that matches their instructor ratings. Ground instructors who have held their certificates for at least two years and have given at least 40 hours of instruction (or FAA-approved course ground instructors with 100 hours under their belts) can provide first-time flight instructor candidates with their required ground training and endorse the same.
Training students and pilots using flight simulators is a limited privilege carved out by a pair of letters of interpretation (Gatlin 2010 [PDF download] and Frick 2011 [PDF download]). Ground instructors may use any level of flight simulator as a method, or tool, of instruction — so long as that sim time is not logged and counted “towards meeting the aeronautical experience requirements for a pilot certificate or rating.” Additionally, ground instructors may use sims to assist pilots in maintaining general proficiency, but, again, that sim time is not loggable as a flight activity, such as the experience required for instrument recency.
Ground instructor certificates are issued without specific expiration dates, but to exercise the privilege of the certificate, the holder must meet the recency of experience requirement of 14 CFR section 61.217, which essentially requires the instructor to have been actively teaching in the previous year. A medical certificate is not required to exercise the privileges of a ground instructor certificate.
William E. Dubois is the ground school program manager for Infinity Flight Group and a widely published aviation writer. He holds a ground instructor certificate with all ratings, a commercial pilot certificate with an instrument rating, and is a dual-accredited master ground instructor.
