Improving New Recruits’ Performance: A Serious Games Study I
PRESS RELEASE:
This is the story of how the Royal Navy used Serious Games to transform training effectiveness on a crucial operational area on board ship – Engineering Safety Rounds Inspection. Historically, this was the Maritime Warfare School’s worst performing course. Compared to classroom training, the immersive learning experience of Serious Games improved trainee capability, cut failure rates by 54% and reduced the needs for additional resource requirements.
A Performance Problem
What would you do if 13% of all new recruits were failing one of their most critical courses? How would you cope with a failure rate that was 200%-300% higher than most of your other core training subjects and the cost to retrain failed recruits kept on rising? Clearly, figures like these would be unsustainable in most training and performance programmes and this was no different for the training officers of the Royal Navy’s Maritime Warfare School (MWS), where improving performance and reducing cost were constant operational goals.
Upon identifying these unfavourable statistics, the MWS began evaluating current training methods for the course in question; the Engineering Safety Rounds Inspection, and officers were able to identify several factors that were contributing. Getting on board ship for the first time was a shock for new recruits and this, coupled with the close spaces and complex operational environment, proved too challenging for many new recruits to complete without further training.
A solution was needed to reduce this initial shock period, shorten the learning curve and provide a safe practice environment for recruits to carry out their Safety Rounds Inspections, prior to boarding the ship for the first time. It was also necessary that whatever solution was reached, training officers could still assess the recruit’s technical aptitude and fault finding skills during the trial inspection.
It was decided that the best and most cost-effective solution was to create a “serious game”; a fully immersive, 3d virtual ship that would enable trainees to walk through it and perform duties as if they were actually on board.
Serious Game Requirements
In order to achieve this, the MWS, in conjunction with award-winning serious games development company Caspian Learning, began production of the virtual ship and met with subject matter experts from the specialist school to start building the course content. It was clear that the finished game would need to meet the following key requirements:
- Allow trainees the ability to role-play scenarios.
- Allow the trainees to explore an accurate representation of the ship; a Type 23 Royal Navy frigate.
- The ability to have trainees observe an instructor walking through the scenarios whilst also having access to a separate self study mode.
- The ability to interact with the environment.
- The ability to re-use the assets (art content) for further applications (such as recruitment or experimentation).
What Was Done?
To meet MWS’s objectives, Caspian Learning developed an immersive 3D interactive game titled “Weapons Engineering Round – Immersive Learning Simulation” with their Thinking Worlds™ technology.
Thinking Worlds™ is a globally unique engine; in as far as it is a real 3D games engine that has a range of proven learning interactions and behaviours designed into it. The engine allowed Caspian Learning to develop and utilise high fidelity 3D environments, such as the exterior and interior of the Navy frigate in the MWS game. It also allowed highly interactive game challenges to be used to target core learning outcomes.
As required by the brief, the recruits’ immersive experience on board the ship begins not by sitting behind a computer screen but by being able to follow the instructor as he navigates through the ship using the instructor-led mode built into the game. Trainers can first present the ship to recruits on a projector screen.
As if they were on board a real ship, the trainers lead the learners through many of the ship’s compartments – the Combined Radar Office, Gyro Room, Bridge, Mess, SCOT Office, 4.5 area, Ship Control Centre, FWD SIS, FWD 911, and CMR. Additionally, the trainers guide the recruits through a typical Engineering Safety Rounds Inspection that involves photo-realistic device and compartment checks. During each round, and in each compartment, trainers examine and elaborate on equipment. By the time the lesson is complete, recruits are familiar with the importance of their jobs and the critical nature of the machinery on the ship.
Going Solo
In the free play solo mode of the game, recruits immediately discover that on board the ship is a saboteur who is creating faults in the machinery and putting the ship’s crew in danger. The recruit must find and fix the errors, locate the saboteur, and disarm his bomb before time runs out. In doing so, the recruit explores the ship and its cramped noisy compartments, interacts with the equipment they will use on the job and assembles knowledge about the critical importance of the machines.
