In an article featured in the August 2011 issue of Military Training Technology the magazine asked, “What role(s) will your company best fill as the United States military turns more to the use of serious gaming in an effort to reduce the military’s training costs while maintaining the combat readiness of the warfighter?”
Here is what Ed Heinbockel, President of Visual Purple contributed to the article:
“Today’s warfighters have been raised on video games. They learn differently than past generations. By recognizing and leveraging the learning styles appropriate to current trainees, 3-D animated decision-based virtual world training offers instruction that is relevant and effective—with improvement in both motivation to train and knowledge retention—this type of training is proven to be very, very sticky.
Through the use of 3-D animated decision-based serious game training, a platform is presented to today’s warfighter that is immediately recognizable and significantly more palatable than traditional PowerPoint-type ‘page flip’ training. By offering simulation training aimed at individuals rather than large groups, training can take place anytime and anywhere the trainee has access to a computer, while non-virtual training can accommodate only a limited number of instructors and students at any given time. Refinement of training content is a continuing requirement necessary to ensure that warfighters have the latest and most relevant training possible.
One of the many benefits of Visual Purple’s training products is our proven technologies that allow for rapid updates and changes. Unlike some training programs that are difficult to make changes and/or updates to, Visual Purple simulations can easily be ‘remodeled’ later should the need arise. The number of true subject matter experts (SMEs) is limited. By incorporating SMEs’ expertise into learning content, the impact they provide is expanded to cover the entire training audience. Improvements in hardware capability have allowed for significant improvements in graphics and training technologies. More ‘horsepower’ in smaller packages (smartphones, touchpads, tablets, etc.) allows warfighters to train anytime and anywhere. These mission rehearsal modeling tools are aiding in overall military readiness by streamlining training capabilities. One thing is for sure: it beats the so-called BOGSAT (or Bunch of Guys Sitting Around a Table). Emerging technologies are changing the way today’s military trains-up.”
The Department of Defense has been in the news on a number of occurrences in past months highlighting the use of virtual worlds by the organization. They are utilizing virtual worlds for a host of different applications, one of which deals with post-traumatic stress in our soldiers, see this story for more details. This project is called The T2 Virtual PTSD Experience and is based in Second Life. By being based in Second Life it does allow an extra layer of interactivity as the player/ trainee is able to interact with anyone else that is experiencing the simulation. It just goes to show that the immersive nature of virtual worlds make them a prime candidate for this type of training and much more!
Another article on the defense.gov website published back in May featured Frank DiGiovianni, the director of training readiness and strategy in the office of the deputy assistant secretary of defense for readiness. As quoted by the article, “Five years from now, if Frank C. DiGiovanni has his way, warfighters from every service will learn aspects of their trade on a world in cyberspace.” Furthermore, “For the DOD virtual world experts are working on “a governance model that makes sense” in which everyone in the world can participate, DiGiovanni said, much like the Constitution allows American citizens to participate in their government.
“A governance model allows you to take all the efforts that are going on and synchronize them, integrate them, so you have a comprehensive whole, and not four separate efforts,” he added.
“I don’t want four separate worlds, I want one world … to be able to leverage all that content building that’s being done by everyone out there,” the director said.
The Strategic Plan for the Next Generation of Training for the Department of Defense, which was published in 2010, features leveraging emerging technologies to enhance the overall DoD training capabilities.
The blog post title may have you scratching the top of your head a little bit…The “Uncanny Valley” is a phenomenon that leads to a reaction from an all ‘but-not-quite-right’ simulated human form, whether it be robotic or animated. The term was invented by roboticist Masahiro Mori to depict the negative emotional response ‘real’ humans exhibit when a robot (avatar) seems practically human. Appearance and action are the two biggest factors that could potentially lead to this phenomenon playing out while one is immersed in a virtual world. Thus the overall quality of the avatar is paramount in any type of training simulation, the worst thing you can do is lead the player to possess detachment from the training. The human brain never ceases to amaze me.
“Mori’s hypothesis states that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong revulsion. However, as the appearance and motion continue to become less distinguishable from a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.”
“This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a “barely human” and “fully human” entity is called the uncanny valley. The name captures the idea that a robot which is “almost human” will seem overly “strange” to a human being and thus will fail to evoke the empathic response required for productive human-robot interaction.”
You can see by the graph representation below that the “valley” in question is a dip in the graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s lifelikeness.
In all fairness, I guess I should disclose that one such study that examined the Uncanny Valley principle did involve monkeys…Monkey see, monkey do.
For regular followers of the blog you have probably seen me write about avatars a time or two. Well good news- they are getting more and more realistic! So it’s no secret that various branches of the military are looking more and more closely at immersive technologies. A recent article in Signal Magazine entitled “Virtual Humans Keep it Real” outlined the Army-funded research for virtual reality being conducted at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies. A terrific example of groundbreaking technology coming from the University is with virtual humans (yes, I said virtual humans). Although these are not your ‘average’ avatar, rather they are computer programmed with artificial intelligence and capable of understanding language and able to respond appropriately. This conversation capability is not assisted in any way by a ‘real’ human and is complete with genuine emotions. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Martin E. Dempsey wrote in Army Magazine, the idea is “to make training more rigorous and relevant by leveraging technology to create challenging training environments for our leaders.” So watch out for more realistic training coming to a computer near you!
So I’m sure that most of us have heard the term – “Death by Webinar” and yes, I too will confess to multi-tasking throughout a webinar. It just isn’t as interactive and interesting as other stuff I could be doing. So for WebEx and death by PowerPoint, oh the hours we have all spent putting together those snazzy little PowerPoint presentations. Are webinars really still a breakthrough technology? In my humble opinion the presenter of the webinar speeds through the slides and the attendees aren’t given the ability to learn at their own pace, providing for information transfer but not much learning.
So you have probably seen us post various tidbits on audio such as Emulating Human Voice-overs with TTS Voices on the blog. While solely utilizing text and graphics in simulations can work, the real question is: Does it really work? Voice talent is a large piece of the puzzle in any narrated simulation. Visual Purple simulations do allow for text (otherwise known as closed captioning) to appear in all of the simulation (not just at the decision points). Thus supporting those that learn better by reading as opposed to listening. Fully narrated scenes definitely enhance the learners’ cognitive processing, thus audio can be very effective for a variety of learning styles.
The Centre for People Development recently came out with a survey on trends in training… and survey says 73% of participants would prefer less classroom based courses. That’s a pretty high number of participants that are bored with current learning methods presented by their employer. And believe it or not, 87% were in favor of more e-learning/ mobile learning (which I translate into simulations). So there you have it, the trainees have spoken and they want more simulations!
According to the Encyclopedia of Educational Technology here are the 5 Levels of Simulation Design. Let’s start at the top…
Level 5: The Full Simulation
The most complex type of simulation design offering the trainee a fully immersive environment with all paths and options available.
Level 4: Multiple Input Paths
A more realistic type of simulation that offers the trainee/ learner the ability to gain a deeper understanding of more complex material presented.
Level 3: Data Input
Data entry or button choices highlight this level of simulation design. This method does offer a higher level of realism.
Level 2: Point and Click
This would be comparable to generic types of E-Learning simulation scenarios, just point and click. Nothing too complicated here folks!
Level 1: Screen Capture
Useful when doing an overview on a specific procedure, no real user interaction takes place on this level.
*Image courtesy of the Encyclopedia of Educational Technology
I have said it before and I’ll say it again – Gaming technology for military personnel is on the rise. High-ranking officials are getting up to speed and demanding engaging training tools for our troops. These tools are complementary to more costly dedicated training equipment and offer a unique, realistic and memorable experience for the soldier. One step in the right direction is that the military is getting more and more infused with virtual worlds. I have long lamented the benefits of virtual worlds for training our troops. TMCNet reported that “Virtual worlds also provide benefits to the military. They can introduce newer soldiers to a terrain and the local officials found in a country like Afghanistan. Or, they can help teach mechanics about how to repair airplanes or tanks.” Virtual world training allows for the soldiers to practice in a life-like simulation type of experience without all the inherent risks involved in battlefield OJT.
Children awe at being read stories from simple books that have textures for them to feel as a baby/ toddler to the grade school history text books. The point is that we are brought up around stories from an early age. Even though adults nowadays may be getting away from the traditional hardcover or paperback types of books, storytelling is still here. It may just reside in iPads and Kindles and the like instead. But what makes stories jump off the page? Well of course you can read a book full of text without pictures, while most of us tend to create specific images in our mind of the different scenarios being played out- is that really enough? By using “digital storytelling” the user is being immersed into a realistic environment that replicates the real world down to a tee.
“Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.” –Robert McKee
Digital Storytelling
Digital storytelling is the art utilizing computer-based tools to tell a story. So I consider Visual Purple’s intelligent training simulations to do the same. Although the storyline of a simulation is immersive by itself we pepper it with decision blocks (and yes we do use Hollywood writers to craft our intelligent training simulations). Digital Stories also may encompass audio narration, images/ reference materials, video clips, etc.
