d-FOUR Electronic Toolkit (d4ET)

ABSTRACT: An opportunity exists to develop methodologies and tools to objectively assess the overall training effectiveness of a simulation and pinpoint specific system characteristics such as fidelity and training strategy support which contribute to the training effectiveness or lack thereof. To address this, Design Interactive (DI) proposes to develop the d-FOUR Electronic Toolkit (d4ET), a Training Effectiveness Evaluation (TEE) software support tool which allows users to: 1) determine how well existing simulators are addressing training objectives, 2) diagnose specific system characteristics (e.g., fidelity specifications, training strategy support) which impact training effectiveness, 3) develop recommendations for system certification (e.g., maintain, improve or decertify system), and 4) compare training effectiveness of different systems to determine the most cost effective system to train target objectives. The d4ET achieves this utilizing a tiered approach to training effectiveness evaluation that focuses on performance-outcome requirements and is tied to a Training Effectiveness Readiness Level taxonomy which prescribes a hierarchical training effectiveness scale providing an objective definition of the true efficacy that a training system has been demonstrated to achieve. d4ET will facilitate a less resource intensive and more objective evaluation of training systems which is flexible enough to be performed anytime in the training system life cycle. BENEFIT: The d4ET software support tool has the potential to lead to significant benefits with respect to cost, schedule and performance. Specifically, d4ET has the potential to reduce costs by reducing the resources necessary to conduct a TEE and reducing training system costs by identifying most cost effective training system(s) to meet training objectives. D4ET has the potential to reduce schedule impacts by reducing the time it takes to conduct a TEE and the decision time for training system certification by providing objective and quantifiable metrics of training effectiveness. Finally, d4ET has the potential to improve performance through an increase in Training and Readiness Levels by increasing the quality of training simulators and thus opportunities for learning to occur while decreasing training time by eliminating simulation training which does not lead to significant gains in transfer performance.