Interactive Learning Environment for Managing Multinational, Interagency, and Other Interactions in Stability, Security, Transition and Reconstruction

The post-Cold War era has witnessed significant growth in the number of latent tensions that have exploded into violent conflicts. The civil and humanitarian emergencies created by these conflicts have produced an unprecedented need for stability, security, transition, and reconstruction operations, requiring cooperation between military forces and NGOs. Cultural differences between the military and NGOs have made collaboration difficult. Educational and performance-support interventions designed to enhance interpersonal effectiveness in joint military-NGO operations are badly needed and may have significant impact on the success of efforts to win international peace. To address this need, CPResearch is proposing to research and develop a web-based system that will enable the synchronous, distributed, collective development of military-NGO team planning capabilities through cultural awareness education, knowledge management techniques, and deliberate practice. CPResearch will team with Pearson Knowledge Technologies, known for its innovative latent semantic analysis algorithms, so that automated content analysis may serve as the backbone for sequencing reference material and exercise scenarios, providing information push at key learning moments, and enabling augmented team collaboration with real and virtual teammates. This proposal describes the Phase I research, design, and prototyping we plan to undertake to guide the development of a fully functional Phase II product.