Pedagogical Practice for Learning, Assessment, and Remediation (POPULAR)

Upon arrival for a training event, squadrons frequently must spend time working through basic procedures that need not be completed on-range. Time on the range could be used more effectively, resulting in greater overall training and readiness benefit, if aviators arrived, in aggregate, better prepared for the specific exercises being planned, and if the instructors and aviators planning the event better understood the capabilities and limitations of individual units before their arrival. This effort proposes to use simulation-based training, in conjunction with individualized, dynamic tailoring of the simulation, to identify and to remediate skill gaps. We propose to produce a system that provides simulation exercises designed to assess skill and readiness, diagnose potential reasons for skills gaps, and recommend additional training/practice scenarios targeted not just to skill gaps but to the underlying reasons or causes for deficits. Training and remediation scenarios such as the ones envisioned here are today manually created. Manual creation has the benefit of applying direct, expert knowledge to the needs. However, manual scenario creation results in lags between the observation of a need and delivery of  targeted scenarios for those needs and requires high-demand subject-matter experts. This effort will pursue automated scenario generation within the context of readiness assessment and evaluate the extent to which scenario construction methods are sufficiently mature and capable to construct effective and targeted exercises for readiness assessment and remediation.