Engineering & Computer Simulations

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Advanced Distributed Learning Courseware

The dramatic transformation of America's strategic environment has had a major impact on our military forces, and demands an equally dramatic transformation in how we prepare the forces for combat and non-combat operations. Recent deployments have highlighted the need for the services to provide training on demand to soldiers and units deployed worldwide. The Department of Defense recognizes this and is implementing a Training Transformation Strategy that emphasizes the use of Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) programs as critical to achieving the department's training and transformation goals, thus ensuring that training is readily available to both active and reserve military personnel, regardless of time and place.

Recent years have seen huge increases both in computing power and the number of people able to access computers and the Internet. This proliferation of information and communication technologies has enabled higher quality learning to be made available to an ever-growing audience through increasingly sophisticated modes of presentation. Today's distance learning technologies have already become powerful and valuable extensions to traditional educational initiatives.

Learning is a comprehensive process which does not simply consist of the transmission and learning of content. Assessment is an important element in the teaching and learning process. Proficiency assessment tools play a key role in determining when the student is ready to proceed to a more challenging level of training. Intelligent Tutoring Capabilities should interactively react to the student's level of understanding of the knowledge domain by determining when the student needs help and adapting the instruction accordingly. As the student's level of proficiency increases, it will conform to the evolving skill level of the student. Different feedback formats provide immediate knowledge of results and increase the rate of acquisition and retention of learned behaviors.

ECS has developed an inter-operable framework named "Scenario" to support web-based, 3D training simulations. The Scenario simulation system uses the "Gamebryo" rendering pipeline to power realistic virtual environments in which to train. Its standards-based architecture promotes reusability and allows for faster development times, lower development costs and increased performance on modestly powered personal computers. It leverages existing computing infrastructures and networks to provide a platform to incorporate simulations into any ADL courseware. This is done through the use of interfaces that are transparent to the user, but allow simulations to communicate information back and forth between any SCORM conformant Learning Management System (LMS).

Conformance to the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) 2004 promotes reusable and interoperable learning resources across multiple Learning Management Systems. At its simplest, SCORM 2004 is a model that references a set of interrelated technical specifications designed to meet DOD's high-level requirements for Web-based learning content. Within the SCORM context, the term LMS implies a server-based environment in which the intelligence resides for controlling the delivery of learning content to students.

Using this framework, ECS has developed courseware for the US Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, the National Guard Bureau's, Civil Support Teams for Weapons of Mass Destruction, the Joint ADL Co-Laboratory, the US Army Medical Department Center & School and the US Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation. Scenario's standards-based architecture promotes reusability and allows for faster development times, lower development costs and increased performance on modestly powered personal computers. This technology can reach large numbers of people quickly with timely information, allow for the tailoring of training to local situations and provide simulated experiences that transfer efficiently into high levels of performance

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