Development of a Supportability Performance Assessment System for Training Systems

In order to win the war for recruitment and retention, the CNO has stated that sailors of today and tomorrow must be well trained and equipped. Given the diverse needs of training communities, acquisition managers, and curriculum developers it isultimately important to provide accountability and ownership in any mechanism or process that intends to enhance performance. This SBIR project will develop an approach for an architecture that is extensible and scalable, and aligns the AN/SQQ-89(V) USWcombat system as well as combat systems in the future with Task Force EXCEL objectives. Implementation of a Supportability Performance Assessment System within a tactical system architecture will provide a quantum increase in collaborative training andtraining evaluation capabilities that have here to for been unobtainable. We propose to illicit stakeholder involvement in development of the SPAS through solicitation of parametric data relationship mappings that will provide quantifiable metric datadeemed critical in evaluation of skills application and acquirement of knowledge. Additionally, because some competencies are not directly observable/measurable (behaviors and attitudes for example), the proposed SPAS design and architecture would besufficiently robust to enable monitoring of user and team action derivatives thereby providing repeatable standards to assess otherwise subjective MOEs. The proposed Supportability Assessment Performance System (SPAS) addresses the challenges presented by decreased time allocated to traditional classroom training and greater emphasis on just-in-time and other computer-delivered training. SPAS providesdata gathered in significant enough detail to realistically appraise task performance. The SPAS technology can be a significant enhancement to the existing AAC Learning Management System (LMS), Data Driven Learning System (DDLS), and Knowledge ManagementSystem (KMS) suite. SPAS tasks can be loaded, edited, and published as Shareable Content Objects (SCOs), thus fulfilling a requirement of SCORM. This means SPAS is not restricted to AAC-produced LMS, and will therefore have wider appeal where analternative LMS is already in place. AAC proposes to market the SPAS technology as a component of its current learning tools as well as an enhancement to existing SCORM-compliant learning management systems. AAC expects a broad demand for this uniquesolution. There is currently no similar system on the market. AAC's proposed SPAS will appeal to knowledge industries such as credit, banking, financial services, utilities, and insurance.