Approach To Examine Efficacy Of Game-Based And Virtual Simulation Training

The United States Army has heavily leveraged, developed and expanded its use of virtual simulation training, as this class of simulation has been empirically demonstrated to be effective in the transfer of skills to the live environment. Game-based training, an alternative class of simulation, is characterized by its lower overhead and cost and potentially represents a less expensive alternative to virtual simulation training. In an effort to reduce the cost of training simulation, the U.S. Army has recently socialized the concept of potentially replacing select virtual simulation trainers with game-based simulations. While lowering the cost of simulation is a noble endeavor, the aforementioned concept requires further investigation as minimal empirical evidence exists regarding the effectiveness of game-based training, particularly at the collective echelon of training. In this paper, we lay the foundation to conduct an investigation of whether a game-based simulation may be as equally an effective collective training apparatus as a higher-cost, higher-fidelity, virtual simulation. Specifically, we discuss a planned Training Effectiveness Evaluation (TEE) of both the Aviation Combined Arms Tactical Trainer (AVCATT) and a game-based aviation simulation that will empirically determine whether or not virtual training in the AVCATT could potentially be replaced by an equally effective, but less costly, game-based simulation. We discourse on our proposed design of experiment, which will utilize qualified Army aviators performing a tactical, collective mission in two discrete training treatments (AVCATT and a game-based simulation) at Fort Rucker, Alabama