Language & Culture

Foreign language skills and cultural expertise are essential enabling capabilities for activities and operations in non-English speaking regions of the world. The emerging importance of cultural identity and its inherent frictions make it imperative for actors on the ground to understand the societal and cultural norms in which we function. Education and training are required to teach the intricacies of appreciating, understanding and respecting the cultural norms of other populations in order to shape and define our interactions. There is great potential to leverage existing tools and content to build upon traditional methods of cultural awareness training by delivering complex, scenario-based simulations.

Our approach to using simulations considers the nature of individual learning as well as how knowledge is constructed in social situations. Our technologies provide practical, hands-on experience in situations that cannot easily be practiced by using real scenarios while ensuring that essential skills are sustained once an individual has attained them. These simulations supplement traditional training methods by providing challenges and experiences that closely approximate a complex situation in the field where the students must think in real time and the course of events is determined by their decisions. Students develop a deeper understanding of the knowledge presented and retain that information better when it is learned through the process of solving complex problems in realistic situations.