Recent operational requirements at NATO has caused an explosion in student population. Where there was 60 students in 2007, now there are over 1200 students.
An online training solution was required that enabled students to realistically practice skills pre and post classroom work. NATO students would not accept Death by PowerPoint – the training solution must provide immersive training scenarios available online, offline and on mobile devices.
The mission of the NATO Maritime Interdiction Operational Training Centre (NMIOTC) is to conduct the combined training necessary for NATO forces to better execute surface, sub-surface, aerial surveillance, and special operations activities in support of Maritime Interdiction Operations (MIO).
The Center is located in Crete and based the Framework Nation Greece. It falls within the area of NATO Allied Command Transformation (ACT). Since 2008 provides theoretical and practical training to NATO and NATO Partner nations within an MIO context. Specifically, the Center:
- Improves allied naval units’ expertise in Maritime Interdiction Operations through specific theoretical and practical training programs
- Promotes skills, interoperability and co-operation among naval units through sea training and simulation
In the last several years, the centre has seen its student population grow significantly – with only 60 students in 2008 and well over 1,200 students in 2011.
NMIOTC required a distance learning solution to compliment and enhance their practical classroom training. The solution must prepare students effectively for the classroom training with realistic scenarios. The solution must also provide students with a flexible environment for continued refresher training to maintain their skill levels.
NMIOTC has a reputation for training innovation. Under the guidance of NATO ACT, they were determined to avoid ‘Death by PowerPoint’, PDF’s and Page Turner e-learning. The goal is to find a way to transform existing materials into engaging and effective individual online training. The solution must be robust enough to handle the existing student population and scalable enough to accommodate the likely future growth in student numbers.
Of course, given current economic situations, the solution must also be cost-conscious.
Unlocking Latent Capability
Although a clear requirement existed for new distributed learning, there was still a large library of existing learning material that had been well-written and researched.
As well as increasing the scalability of existing material, a secondary project goal was to find a way to integrate all of the latent capability of existing learning into new, more innovative forms of individual distributed learning.
There were several options available to NMIOTC to achieve this but the method they preferred (that was supported by the largest proportion of the learning cohort) was to introduce virtual training ‘games’ or ‘serious games’, similar to those used in home computer console systems.
The ‘game’ was to be called ‘Boarder’s Ahoy’.
Transformational Training
Given the requirement to bring the online training capabilities up to a higher and more scalable standard, NATO needed to commission the services of an expert serious games design company who already had experience with similar projects.
After the submission of a competitive RF process, a consortium led by Engineering & Computer Simulations (ECS) and including UK-based Caspian Learning and Bohemia Interactive Simulations, was selected to deliver the project.
ECS, Caspian Learning and Bohemia Interactive Simulations had already worked with defense organisations in both the UK and the US individually. Both ECS and Caspian Learning had previously won awards for ‘best simulations’ in category in recent years.
Together, the consortia had some of the world’s leading skills and experience required to deliver high-impact virtual training, immersive simulations and serious games.
For ‘Boarders Ahoy’ project, a solution was required that would allow the subject matter experts to transform their existing training content into online immersive training.
It was a requirement that the eventual solution should allow greater control over the creation of more learning content, reuse existing training materials and be distributable to a wide range of users, no matter where they were located in the world.
This distribution provision included distributing to web and mobile devices – including iPads, iPhones and Android.
Caspian Learning and Bohemia Interactive Simulations’ joint product, VBSWorlds, was the software that was chosen to build the training because it met or exceeded all of the development and distribution requirement capabilities.
The plan was to develop the game in 2 phases.
The planned first phase was to complete the game for individual learning and web and mobile deployment.
The second phase, not yet delivered, is to deploy the same game in a multiplayer format with additional training scenarios.
Boarders Ahoy!
For the first phase, the actual game itself was designed using the existing content from the existing library of e-Learning training materials. These materials included a mixture of power point slides, training manuals and subject matter expertise.
As they were, they were not immersive, engaging or scalable but, perhaps most importantly, they were rich in good subject content.
Using VBSWorlds (and without needing to commission a brand new range of e-learning modules that were more engaging) NATO were able to transform these content rich traditional e-learning materials into an immersive virtual training scenario – an interactive ‘game’.
Boarders Ahoy aimed to capture the highly engaging atmosphere created by a game environment whilst duplicating the behaviour changing objectives of the existing high quality learning.
In order to achieve this, the game was set in the most immersive environment suitable; in this case, onboard a cargo ship. The learner (‘player’) plays the part of an investigating officer who is given the task of identifying illicit cargo or suspicious activity during a maritime interdiction operation.
The processes by which the officer attempts to identify illegal activities are taken from the existing learning material and transformed into scenes within the game.
For example, in the screenshot above, the learner is exploring a container full of crates in the 3D environment. He can choose to investigate any of the crates for more information.
If the information presented sounds suspect, then the learner can flag it as suspect for further investigation. This action is then recorded into an LMS so that the learner’s score can be recorded and actionable feedback given at the end of the exercise.
The cargo ship contains many similar investigative scenarios including cargo, crew and rooms as well as several more.
Each different type of investigative scenario was built from the existing training content.
By the time the player completes the ‘game’, he will have completed the entire training course specific to that type of operation.
Whenever and Wherever It’s Required
As well as the key requirement to deliver the project in a more engaging way, it was also necessary to deliver the project so that the finished learning could be consumed on a wide range of devices; including PCs, Web and Mobile – wherever they were required in the world.
Successfully having this capability would make the solution infinitely more scalable.
In the case of Boarders Ahoy, this problem was overcome by VBSWorlds’ built-in capability to deploy simulations and games at the push of a button in formats suitable for a number of different devices.
This meant that the Boarders Ahoy game could be played on PCs and laptops as a standalone application or through an internet browser via Java or, alternatively, on either an iOS (iPad or iPhone) or Android mobile device.
Using any of these delivery methods would allow learners to consume the game whenever or wherever they were required to whilst facilitating individual self-paced learning outside of the classroom.
Having Boarders Ahoy available in the Android Marketplace, for instance, instantly makes it more accessible to the cohort.
Timeframes
The timeframe to deliver Phase One of the Boarders Ahoy project was dramatically reduced by the availability of existing materials and NATO’s willingness to support their use in the new ‘game’.
With a skilled team of instructional designers working on the project, the consortium was able to complete the project in just 3 months.
The time to complete the project includes design, testing and distribution.
In summary; the time it took to develop this highly engaging immersive virtual training ‘game’ was comparative to the time it had previously taken to create the traditional e-learning.
Outcomes
Phase one of the NATO Boarders Ahoy project successfully delivered on several key objectives:
- It enabled students to practice skills outside of the classroom
- It allowed the existing training materials to be easily converted to an immersive training format
- It allowed the new ‘game’ to be distributed whenever and wherever it was required
- It enabled NMIOTC to change and update the immersive training content themselves ongoing
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