Authoring Demonstrations and Assessments for Perceptual Training

The USMC Combat Hunter program trains warfighters to be"combat hunters,"providing instruction for combat profiling, tracking, and enhanced observation. Combat Hunter is delivering highly successful training for those warfighters who have opportunity to participate. Computer-based training tools may significantly extend the reach of the training of combat profiling skills as inspired by Combat Hunter. However, additional tools are needed to 1) prepare trainees and instructors for Combat Hunter, 2) provide individualized sustainment training, and 3) enable participants to build"training"for colleagues not able to participate in Combat Hunter course. Soar Technology proposes to extend, to refine, and to specialize existing content-development tools. These tools, when integrated together and applied to the perceptual training problem, will enable instructors and training content developers to bridge the gaps above. The tools embed evidence-based, instructional design"best practices,"enabling the authors to focus on domain content, and they output instructional lessons, integrated within a simulation-based practice tool. In Phase I, we propose to investigate the application of the existing tools to perceptual training, focusing especially on the requirements of 3D, immersive environments.