An IPD-based approach for Adaptable Story-based Leadership Training & Assessment

Intelligent Automation, Inc. proposes to develop Leadership Education through Evolutionary Development (LEED). LEED is a leadership skills training program using Interactive Pedagogical Drama (IPD) within a simulation-based training framework. The development of many complex interactive skills, such as military leadership, can be learned well in focused, role-playing learning environments. Such instructional environments enable the targeting of critical skills in realistic situations that force students to practice necessary and challenging skills. In LEED the trainee interacts with the characters in a realistic, narrative-driven, story-based setting. The characters are created with an intelligent agent-based infrastructure; each character is an autonomous agent with motivations, attitudes, and emotions that can independently ‘enact’ its part in the story. The plot changes as the trainee’s actions affect the current state of the story. This inherent flexibility in LEED provides (a) adaptability of the training environment, as well as (b) believability, through the use of an intelligent agent-based infrastructure to model characters. LEED aims to be highly accessible: we are using a SCORM-compliant web-based distance learning infrastructure to universally deliver the training content. LEED will provide focused leadership training by presenting scenarios from a carefully constructed taxonomy of stories that facilitate development and practice of leadership competencies.