Level 1 Intelligence Analyst Certification

I’ll explain how to get the most from the course by leveraging all the features Udemy provides.  I’ll also describe the associated reference material, practical exercises, and the final certification exam.

I’ll define critical thinking and introduce the students to other experts and sources on the topic.  I’ll discuss the traits of a critical thinker, critical thinking skills, and how to employ them.  I’ll end this lecture with instruction on logical, plausible, and probable reasoning.

This is the second part of Thinking about thinking lecture.  It describes deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning and the explains the strengths and weaknesses of each.

In this lecture I’ll discuss common analytic mistakes and lead the students through some practical exercises to help them discover their own biases.

I’ll reveal some insights into problem solving and provide some counter-tactics to help the students overcome common analytic pitfalls that they can use when performing intelligence analysis.

I’ll explain how problem restatement will broaden our perspective of a problem, help us to identify the central issues and alternative solutions, and increase the chance that the outcome of our analysis will fully, not partially, resolve the problem.

During this lecture, I’ll broadly cover potential sources of intelligence and help the student focus their collection efforts on relevant evidence, which addresses the major factors in a problem statement.  Thus, the student will learn how to be efficient and effective by not wasting effort in gathering extraneous information.

I’ll illustrate how to use a deliberate process to evaluate both direct and inferential evidence based on its source, validity, and relevance.

I’ll review multiple structured analytic techniques and categorize them to aid the student in selecting the technique(s) most appropriate in providing descriptive intelligence analysis.

The attached article warns of some of the possible pitfalls associated with the current efforts to automate intelligence analysis and recommends an investment strategy.

I’ll teach the students how to use the sorting, chronologies and timelines techniques to aid their intelligence analysis.

I’ll teach the students how to use the matrix technique to aid their analysis of specific intelligence problems.

Building on the matrix lecture, I'll teach the students to use this related structuring technique to reveal alternatives.

I'll teach students how to diagram the nodes and connections of an adversary network to reveal interrelationships.

I'll teach student how to apply this commonly used analytic structuring technique to test their intelligence hypotheses.

I’ll discuss the importance of measuring performance and tracking progress to improving one’s intelligence analysis.  Moreover, I’ll show the students how to evaluate an argument using devil’s advocacy, and reevaluate and re-validate previous analytic conclusions based on new evidence.