Challenges to the development of pedagogically driven engineering requirements for complex training systems

Abstract

Complex operating environments are becoming prevalent within industry and the military. Concomitantly, the development of advance technologies is increasing, enabling the simulation of complex environments and presenting exciting training opportunities. What is lacking is strong guidance from training science for how to focus and enhance the use of simulation technologies for training system design. The focus of this paper is to continue the discussion of this long-standing problem by focusing on three causes: the lack of integration of training research, training practice and technology development; the difficulty of translating research findings into useful design artefacts; and fundamental, culturally based differences between the stakeholders involved in training system development, including programme managers, engineers, psychologists and domain experts. The causes are addressed both to raise awareness and to begin envisioning solutions.

Keywords:

• learning science
• training system design
• complex systems

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the guest and anonymous reviewers for their comments, which were very helpful and have been used to refine the ideas in this paper.