A key performance metric for the UK Military is “Brought Up To Standard”, or BUTS rate for short. The Military rigorously measures human performance and for those recruits that fail to make the required standard, they go on to receive additional BUTS training. This demands a considerable investment in additional training resources, cost and time off the job.

It is the BUTS measurement that was used to determine the effectiveness of the serious game lesson in comparison to the traditional classroom lesson. The measurement was taken over 10 classes, throughout the term.

Serious Game Makes Serious Impact

Before an immersive learning simulation had been used to deliver this course, the pedagogical approach had been more traditional; delivered under normal classroom conditions. This meant that recruits spent a lot of time reading from text books and watching PowerPoint presentations.

These methods were not very engaging and far from realistic. The missing context made it difficult for new recruits to fully appreciate their responsibilities and the consequences of not doing their jobs properly. Despite the comprehensive classroom training, new recruits were still heavily susceptible to a shock factor when they boarded for the first time. BUTS rates were 200% – 300% higher compared to other courses.

After using the “Weapons Engineering Rounds” serious game to deliver the course content the BUTS failure rates dropped substantially by almost 60%.  The 6% failure rate was now lower than the average for other courses.

How Did The Recruits React?

As well as measuring the BUTS rates, a questionnaire was tailored specifically to the program and given to all of the recruits who took part in the trial period. Of these 116 trainees, 99 questionnaires were returned and the collated results of this survey can be found at the Caspian Learning website. In general, the trainees found that the simulation was easy to use, relatively intuitive and did aid their understanding of the subject matter being taught.

Feedback from training officers corroborated the results of the questionnaire and the introduction of the serious game package and the overall reaction from MWS has been positive and already discussions are taking place for further content and course development.

Training officers were invited to comment on their own feelings to the course and a summary of some of their comments are below:

“The majority of the students find that the game facilitates their understanding and aids the learning process.”

“Less time is spent using PowerPoint, a welcome break for both instructors and trainees.”

“The simulation has been smoothly integrated into the overall lesson plan.”

“Overall, Caspian Learning’s serious game has been well received and has enabled a fuller understanding of one of the most important roles the trainees will conduct once they join their ship.”

“The lab setup worked well allowing the instructor easy access to the student PCs as required.”

“The noise level in the class is much less than normal. This is due to the increased concentration levels and focus of the trainees on what they’re doing.”

Undoubtedly, the introduction of the serious games package into the MWS Engineering Safety Rounds Inspection course has generated a marked improvement in trainee capability and a greater understanding of the module. This is particularly evident in the reduction of BUTS activity necessary after the course. We can confidently say this is a direct result of the introduction of the game as no other element of the course had been altered.

The qualitative results support the quantitative BUTS data and the overall feeling from this collation of feedback is that the immersive learning simulation has enabled greater trainee understanding of the subject and has enhanced the way this subject is delivered.

Final Words

The use of serious games technology to deliver a key element of career training in the Military has proven successful. The avatar based serious games package delivered and deployed by Caspian Learning has enabled trainees with no previous experience of a Royal Navy warship to successfully conduct Weapons Engineering Safety Rounds in a safe, but effective, training environment.

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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.

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If you’re attending the event, please take some time to have a look at the Caspian Learning military simulations and feel free to approach Graeme with any questions you might have.

Some snippets:

“What they saw with the simulation was a reduction by over 50 percent, in the need to carry out BUTS training in the cohort that went through the Maritime Warfare School simulation, linked to weapons rounds.”

“I think what is clear is that there is no one, and never should there be, simulation or games engine that solves all of our learning ills. There is a need for different simulation technology, both authoring platforms and delivery platforms to deliver different types of learning experience. And that could be the difference between single player scenarios and multiplayer scenarios.”

“And I think that our battle as an organisation is to continually understand those technical restraints that our military clients work in, and work tirelessly to make sure that we make the developmental processes as rapid as possible, and the ease of deployment as simple as possible.”

Read the entire interview at the Defence IQ website.

• Feedback on the design, deployment and results of the new Weapons Rounds Inspection simulation developed in Thinking Worlds for the Maritime Warfare School
• Sharing of opportunities afforded by a rapid, reusable 3D serious games development platform
• Sharing of opportunities of thin client delivery of the simulation to disparate locations

For those unfamiliar with the conference, Defence IQ’s Joint Simulation and Training conference is “the only conference dedicated to improving training in the joint environment,” offering you:

• In-depth assessments of Joint Training initiatives including Exercise Viking 2011, Exercise Snow Leopard and Exercise Virtual Flag
• A chance to discover cost-effective solutions through increased
  mobility to your training scenarios: Ensure soldiers, pilots and sailors are prepared for combat with Live-Virtual-Constructive scenarios
• The ability to leverage the success of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf
  and Serious Gaming technologies through peer to peer knowledge sharing: Establish how to reduce development costs with existing simulation systems
• An opportunity to benchmark your capabilities next to international simulation and training capacity: Network with major defence, military and high-tech industry stakeholders to find out how you can deliver world class joint simulation and training on a consistent
  and affordable basis

If you want to attend the conference and claim a 25% discount on the price then please send an email to me at lee.rushworth at caspianlearning.co.uk.

The eLearnExpo Moscow has enjoyed the position of being the FIRST and ONLY international exhibition and conference in Russia and CIS for professional training and learning with focus on enterprise but with solutions for academic and public sector. Launched in 2004 and now planning for a it’s seventh’s edition the event is supported by the government institutions and is widely covered in press. Having proved its critical importance to the e-learning fraternity worldwide, eLearnExpo Moscow 2010 will be a major event in the field of education and training.

e-learning in the Russian Federation is a fast developing industry and this exhibition and conference provides the global e-learning industry with a unique opportunity to meet the decision-makers. EO market expert evaluation download

The exhibition features over 40 exhibitors from around the world demonstrating their latest platforms, methods, tools and content for e-learning in education and the enterprise.

A two day conference held alongside the exhibition includes master classes, workshops, round tables and keynotes by the leading experts. The aim of the conference is to bring together leading learning professionals and share the very latest methods, tools, concepts, research and experience in e-learning and learning integration. Every year the conference attracts more than 200 speakers and delegates from Russia, CIS and abroad.

Caspian Learning, the UK-based performance simulation and serious games experts, launched the challenge at the recent Game Based Learning conference in London and opened it up to all users of its Thinking Worlds technology.

The company challenged both novice and expert users alike to create the most innovative serious game in just 30 days.

The entries were whittled down to two finalists whose games were selected based on how well the entrant used Thinking Worlds innovatively to create a game with a good storyline and good use of learning interactions within it.

Lee Rushworth, Marketing Executive for Caspian Learning, announced today that A Planet in Peril: Plagiarism was voted as the winning entry by experienced instructional designers at the company. The game was developed by a small group of Communications Media and Instructional Technology doctoral students (who jokingly refer to themselves as Random Precision Studios) from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP).

Mr Rushworth said: “All of the entries we received were of a very good standard, considering that no training had been given to the entrants, but there were one or two that stood out above the others.”

“A Planet in Peril: Plagiarism was one that really stood out to us as a well-produced serious game built with a great sense of humour and some innovative uses of Thinking Worlds interactions that even we hadn’t thought of.”

The game, which is currently in a beta release, follows the story of a student who uncovers the secret of a group of aliens, disguised as academics, at his university campus. The aliens have prophesied the end of the world, which is set to occur due to a student’s excessive plagiarism, and it’s up to the hero to put the pieces of this puzzle together in order to prevent disaster. While working through the challenges players learn about what is, and what is not plagiarism, including ways to avoid it.

The game is targeted at the college and university level but has application for high school students. The final version of the game will be released in the fall.

The idea was pure serendipity… and a little luck. Ryan L. Sittler, Assistant Professor of Library Services at the California University of Pennsylvania (and one of the lead designers for “Random Precision Studios”) said: “I am working on my PhD at IUP and am an avid game player. My State-System colleague, Dr. Kelly Heider, suggested that I create an information literacy game. I knew I could never do it on my own, so I asked some other doctoral students to help get it off the ground. Fortunately, they were interested! It was in our initial conversations that we settled on one information literacy concept – plagiarism – and developed the ridiculous end-of-the-world scenario.”

This team included Chad Sherman and David P. Keppel as the other lead designers (handling the majority of game production) and Dana Covitz Hackley, Chrissy Schaeffer, and Laurie A. Grosik assisting with pre-production and documenting the process for a potential future publication.

After developing the initial concept, David worked on creating custom objects and environments for the game. “Objects can be scaled in size, but environments cannot be. I had to spend a little time tweaking and resizing the original models until I got the scale right. Luckily, this was easy to do using Caspian tools.” After this, it was up to the designers to find a way to make all of the ideas actually work. Chad took the unusual story and turned it into a playable game. He found that, while there were minor problems related to learning the program, Thinking Worlds allowed for just about anything to be developed. “We had some small issues with characters not following a spline properly. Fixing it really just required us to change the starting or ending points. Most of our difficulties came from inexperience with the software and not knowing if it had any limitations; we basically had to teach ourselves how to use it but it also freed us to be creative and think outside of the box.”

Caspian Learning is committed to making the creation of 3D performance simulations and serious games more accessible to traditional learning and development providers.

Using Thinking Worlds technology, the winning game was uploaded to the Internet and is available for anyone to play at http://www.coe.iup.edu/thinkingworldsgame

If you would like to contact any of the IUP Communications Media and Instructional Technology doctoral students that worked on this project, or have feedback about the game (including bugs!), please email Ryan L. Sittler at rlsittler@aol.com

More information about Thinking Worlds can be found at http://www.thinkingworlds.com

About Caspian Learning
Founded in 2002 , Caspian Learning is the developer of the award-winning 3D authoring tool Thinking Worlds. Caspian Learning’s Thinking Worlds uses globally unique technology that allows instructional designers to create fully immersive 3D simulations at costs previously restricted to 2D development. By utilising Thinking Worlds, Caspian has positioned itself as the global leader in the use of 3D games and simulations technology within learning, having developed over 50 applications for clients such as IBM, BBC, QinetiQ, Volvo, the Ministry for Defence and the European Union.

Bohemia Interactive and Caspian Learning announce a formal partnership which will help shape the future of the military simulation and serious games market.

Bohemia Interactive, the foremost military serious games organisation and Caspian Learning, the leading rapid simulation and serious games company are forging a formal partnership that will bring exciting new offerings to military markets around the world. Given the technology and heritage of both organisations, this strategic venture will herald new offerings to the military sector and help to solve current training and simulation issues experienced by defence customers.

Bohemia Interactive has been serving the military simulation community for almost a decade, and will bring its gold standard and industry leading simulation product “VBS2” to the partnership. VBS2 – Virtual Battlespace 2 – is a fully interactive, three-dimensional, PC-based synthetic environment specifically developed for military training, mission rehearsal and analysis.

Caspian Learning will bring its multi award winning and globally unique 3D simulation authoring software and engine, Thinking Worlds, to the partnership. Thinking Worlds will enable the strategic venture to capitalise on both the true thin client delivery mechanisms of Caspian’s core technology and the rapid simulation and scenario editing capabilities of the authoring interface.

The fusion of the current gold standard military serious games product – VBS2 – with the thin client and rapid development cycle of Thinking Worlds, will be a powerful and compelling proposition to defence clients around the world.

Peter Morrison, CEO of Bohemia Interactive Simulations, said “We are both delighted and hugely excited by the opportunities that this new partnership offers us and our clients. Caspian Learning has delivered a unique simulation capability with Thinking Worlds. Fusing this capability with our own technology and experience will enable us to take new types of 3D simulations out to our customers in locations even closer to theatre through thin-client content delivery.”

Graeme Duncan CEO Caspian learning stated “The many synergies between the organisations including management approach and technological ideas will deliver both short term and long term benefits to the market. Bohemia is the leading serious games organisation within the military sector and we are delighted that we are able to work with the team and the technologies to drive innovation even further.”

The first step results of fusing the two technology platforms together will be showcased at ITEC this year, in booth E120. The benefits of blending high fidelity 3D simulation with rapid scenario generation and thin client delivery will be available for all to see.

Screenshots of VBS2 and Thinking Worlds Integration:

About Caspian Learning
Founded in 2002 , Caspian Learning is the developer of the multi award-winning 3D authoring tool Thinking Worlds. Caspian Learning’s Thinking Worlds uses globally unique technology that allows instructional designers to create fully immersive 3D simulations at costs previously restricted to 2D development. By utilising Thinking Worlds, Caspian has positioned itself as the global leader in the use of 3D games and simulations technology within learning, having developed over 50 applications for clients such as IBM, BBC, QinetiQ, Volvo, The Ministry of Defence and the European Union.

About Bohemia Interactive
Bohemia Interactive Simulations is a world leader in providing simulation and integrated training solutions for military organisations. With origins in the gaming industry, Bohemia successfully exploits game-based technology and applies this to breakthrough, military-specific simulation products. Our primary focus is the development of the Virtual Battlespace (VBS) series, which is used in daily training and mission rehearsal by premier military organisations worldwide including the ADF, Canadian Forces, UK MoD, US Army and USMC.

The interview attempted to probe Mr Duncan on the challenges presented by building this type of simulation and how he envisioned the advance of the technology in the years ahead. The entire interview is available to listen to at this page or, if you want to, download it from this location.

Defence IQ is hosting the Joint Simulation and Training Conference at Le Méridien Piccadilly, London, 27th – 28th September this year. Visit www.jointsimulationandtraining.com for more information.

3D immersive simulation technology firm Caspian Learning wins two more elearning accolades for its innovative Thinking Worlds rapid authoring software.

THE company behind the groundbreaking 3D authoring tool, Thinking Worlds, is celebrating after scooping two prestigious technology awards.

Caspian Learning, the UK-based 3D simulation and serious games experts, won the pair of gold medals in Brandon Hall Research’s 2009 Excellence In Learning Technology Awards.

Both accolades were for its pioneering Thinking Worlds rapid 3D authoring tool. The company struck gold in two categories: the Best Advance in 3-D or Immersive Learning Technology, and Best Advance in Technology for Game or Simulation Authoring.

Lee Rushworth, Marketing Executive for Caspian Learning, said: “We are absolutely thrilled. These are very significant awards.

“Brandon Hall Research is a highly respected and globally renowned authority in the elearning market and winning these awards is a glowing testament to all of the hard work and research that has gone into the development of Thinking Worlds.”

The Thinking Worlds technology is a commercially-available software platform that allows instructional designers to rapidly create cost-effective 3D immersive learning simulations and browser-based serious games.

Thinking Worlds was launched in April 2009 and by the end of last year had already won two major awards for being the most innovative learning simulation authoring tool available. The latest accolades mean Thinking Worlds has now won four prestigious awards in its very first 12 months.

Earlier this month Caspian Learning, which has offices in the UK and the USA, announced the release of Thinking Worlds 3.3, the latest version of the 3D authoring tool.

Thinking Worlds 3.3 contains new features, including the ability to seamlessly integrate files created in Adobe Flash into 3D environments and publish them directly to the internet. This allows faster development and a cheaper way for designers to develop immersive simulations.

US-based company Brandon Hall Research has been recognising the best in learning content and training innovations for 15 years through its annual Excellence In Learning Awards. But this was the inaugural year of the Brandon Hall Research Excellence in Learning Technology Awards, which aimed to highlight and reward the best in commercial learning technology.

Mr Rushworth added: “It’s rare to have an award-winning product. But it’s amazing to be a part of a company whose product wins four major awards in the first year it is released. We are confident we have created a category-leading product and set the bar really high for our competitors.”

Caspian Learning is committed to making the creation of 3D performance simulations and serious games more accessible to traditional learning and development providers.

A comprehensive overview of the benefits associated with Thinking Worlds 3.3 is available at www.thinkingworlds.com.