Principled Design of an Augmented Reality Trainer for Medics

Design Interactive Inc. (DI) and Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) propose to develop an Augmented reality Learning Environment for Refresher Training (ALERT) that provides realistic and relevant Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TC3) scenarios using AR technologies integrated with mannequins for pre-deployment training and humans for deployed training environments. ALERT will facilitate learning through scenario variations that strategically adapt training content complexity, instructional assistance, fidelity, and stressors based upon user level of expertise and training context. ALERT scenario design configurations will be guided by scientifically-grounded instructional strategies and design guidelines, which will be established via rigorous experimental testing and validation. ALERT will also facilitate learning via integrated modeling of multiple areas of the body and human anatomy rather than focusing on a single condition or area of the body, so that trainees experience learning via interconnected anatomy and develop foundational and generalizable skills. Additionally, ALERT will include embedded measures of performance and a capacity for adaptive training through intelligent coaching. The resulting solution will support both pre-deployment and deployable refresher training, and will also provide a testbed for empirically evaluating instructional approaches and AR technologies for medical training.