Running Head: Measuring Team Knowledge

The design of team training programs and other team interventions could benefit from an understanding of team cognition. The research presented in this article evaluates methods for eliciting and assessing team knowledge during acquisition of a complex task. Knowledge measures are evaluated in terms of their ability to predict team performance and also in terms of how they reflect skill acquisition. The study was conducted in the context of a synthetic three-person team task that involved operating an uninhabited air vehicle. Eleven teams of three Air Force ROTC cadets participated in three experimental sessions lasting from three to six hours. During these sessions teams were trained on the task and were observed as they performed ten 40-minute missions. During the missions, team performance and team process behaviors were measured, as well as the fleeting team knowledge associated with situation awareness. In addition, long-term team knowledge regarding both taskwork and teamwork were measured off-line in four sessions. Results indicated that teams reached asymptotic performance on this task after 1.5 hours of individual training and four 40-minute team missions. This skill acquisitio