Fighting Bombs in Cyberspace Gives Army an ‘EDGE’

By Cheryl Pellerin

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 12, 2011 – Afghan people and places are being replicated in cyberspace, giving warfighters a way to train for one of the most complex, deadly situations they will face on the ground.

The fight against improvised explosive devices or homemade bombs -- weapons of choice for terrorists everywhere -- has lots of moving parts. That’s why the Joint IED Defeat Organization here is funding a research project prototype that combines technology from virtual worlds, Army simulations and computer gaming.

“We’re down here today working on a product called EDGE -- Enhanced Dynamic Geosocial Environment,” Matt Kaufman, chief of technology and integration at the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, told American Forces Press Service. The command sponsors the JIEDDO-funded prototype, which has been in development for about six months.

Kaufman and other experts at the Army Simulation and Training Technology Center in Orlando, Fla., talked about the effort to integrate “massively multiplayer” online gaming technology like that used in the wildly popular World of Warcraft game, with a virtual world environment and an accurate Army simulation called OneSAF, short for One Semi Automated Forces.

“Our goal,” Kaufman said, “is to be able to recreate the devices, people and activities [that make up the counter-IED effort] in the operational environment as accurately as possible to forces in training.”

When the EDGE prototype is complete, warfighters headed for the war zone will be able to enter, as digital replicas of themselves called “avatars,” a near-exact virtual Afghan village. There, they will be able to practice the work they will do on the ground to search out and destroy roadside bombs, and to track down and disrupt the bomb-making networks whose members fund and supply explosive materials to those they can convince to build and plant the bombs.

Training isn’t the only benefit. In a virtual Afghanistan, if something goes wrong, no one dies.

“That’s where we’re hoping to take EDGE,” said Doug Maxwell, science and technology manager for virtual world and strategic applications at the training and technology center.

EDGE will combine the digital technologies, he added, “so we can leverage the best of both to deliver very quickly to a large audience what we know is going on in the theaters.”

In a counterinsurgency or in irregular warfare, the complexity of the operational environment isn’t just the kinetic piece, said Ben Jordan, director of the operational environment lab models and simulations directorate in TRADOC’s Intelligence Support Activity.

“There is also the noncombatant battle space, the whole notion of how to communicate with elders and clergy and community leaders, build rapport, spot bad guys in a crowd and discern attitudes and how they change,” Jordan said. “These are the kinds of things you can get at.”

Second- and third-order effects a warfighter can’t get in a five-day linear exercise that starts on a Tuesday and ends on a Friday come into play over time, Jordan noted, citing a benefit of the technology.

The combination of technologies that produce EDGE could create a system that’s more sophisticated than any one technology alone.

“What we’re trying to do that’s different from everyone else is combine the capabilities of modern gaming technologies with the accuracy and approved models of the Army through OneSAF,” Kaufman said. “As you look at any of the other games today, what’s missing is the accuracy of the valid physics or models that make them good enough to begin to make behavior changes based on [the gaming scenarios].”

For example, Kaufman said, “when you shoot a bullet, it flies accurately, not just in a straight line.” Most games shortcut the physics, he said, because it takes a lot of computing power to make a virtual world act like the real world, and games focus more on the entertainment and artwork.

“In a training environment where you’ve got to make sure the outcomes are precise, if you don’t understand where the shortcuts have been taken, you can make false assumptions because of what you see in front of you, not because of what really happens,” Kaufman said.

Gaming technology becomes much more persuasive to a user when it is laid on top of a virtual world environment, STTC lead engineer Tami Griffith said.

“Let’s say you and I are standing together in a virtual environment and we decide to build a car,” she said. “I can in seconds throw together the framework of a car. You could say, ‘That’s nice, but I don’t like the lights.’ So you could in real time move the lights and change the wheels or their size, things like that. Within 15 minutes after we’ve designed the car, we could hop in and drive away. How many other environments allow that? That’s pretty powerful.”

“We want to make EDGE as capable and as vividly stimulating as the current game technologies,” Kaufman said, “but bring in the realism necessary to support Army training. That, to date, has never been done.”

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Army Warfighters Go Digital to Hone Skills

By Cheryl Pellerin

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 10, 2011 – With more than 1 million service members on active duty in the United States, the military services, and especially the Army, are running short of a critical commodity -- training grounds.

The problem, intensified by the winding down of two wars, is ratcheting up the interest of Army senior leaders in virtual solutions to real-world constraints.

“We have a lot of soldiers coming home to stations here in the United States, and … we don’t have enough terrain in many of those places to train those soldiers out on live ranges,” Army Col. Anthony D. Krogh told American Forces Press Service.

Krogh is director of the National Simulation Center, part of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

“We just physically can’t do it,” he said. “Fort Lewis is a good example.”

Seven 5,000-person brigades are on the ground at Fort Lewis, now part of Joint Base Lewis-McChord in the state of Washington , he said. “But here’s the thing -- there’s only enough maneuver space and range for one brigade there at a time,” he added.

That means “our perishable skills as soldiers start to atrophy rather rapidly,” the colonel said. “The only way we can make up for that is to use a synthetic, or virtual, world.”

Krogh says Army command and control systems themselves produce a kind of synthetic environment that has been in use for a long time. Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below, called FBCB2, for example, is a computer-based communication platform for commanders.

Blue Force Tracking is a GPS-enabled system that gives military commanders and forces location information about friendly and hostile forces. Other command-and-control visualization tools let commanders see a three-dimensional battle space and locate units or particular soldiers there, the colonel said.

“It doesn’t look like an avatar,” Krogh said, referring to digital representations of users that populate virtual worlds, “but it is a synthetic environment that’s created because we learn or understand quicker through visualization than anything else.”

The Army also uses simulators of all kinds to train soldiers at different levels, he said, from squad and fire-team leaders and individual soldiers to division and core commanders.

Emerging-technology Army initiatives include a Training and Doctrine Command effort called the Training Brain. This combines capabilities, systems, networks and data into a system that uses modeling, simulation and gaming to replicate real-world events for use in training.

Within about four days the Training Brain system can turn a firefight or a mission into a simulation game, the command’s website says.

“In terms of virtual worlds, our primary focus is on Virtual Battlespace 2, the VBS2 game,” Krogh said. “Gaming initially got a bad rap, because a lot of us had teenagers who were playing Xbox and Nintendo instead of doing their homework. Fortunately, we as leaders grew into this and recognized the value.”

VBS2 has been particularly successful, he said. “Arguably, it’s one of the most successful simulations we’ve ever brought to the force,” he added. “In terms of cost versus usage, it’s a huge success.”

Prague-based Bohemia Interactive Studio developed the gaming and training platform in cooperation with the Marine Corps, the Australian Defense Force and other military customers. It includes a virtual battlefield on which users can operate land, sea and air vehicles. Lots of people can play the game at once in virtual complex urban areas that include buildings that players can destroy, and realistic working weapons.

An after-action-review module, called AAR, records every player action, bullet path, explosion and vehicle movement for a detailed examination of the training mission.

“The most important thing in any of these synthetic environments is to have focused training and the ability to conduct an AAR critique [to understand] what you did right and what you need to work on,” Krogh said.

VBS2 and other initiatives have helped Army senior leadership understand the value of virtual training. Now, Krogh said, the Army is looking to expand the use of virtual worlds, noting that virtual reality will allow an entire brigade to train at one time next year at Fort Bliss, Texas.

“Only one battalion will physically maneuver on real dirt,” he explained. “The rest of the brigade will either be in virtual flight or tank simulators or in their command posts through what we call constructive simulation. So [it will feature] a lot of digital dirt, and a little bit of real dirt.”

Further into the future, Krogh said, the Army is exploring the utility of “massively multiplayer” online gaming technology, like that used in World of Warcraft.

“These have been in the commercial world forever, but we’re looking to leverage that for training our soldiers around the clock, around the world, where they can always jump onto that synthetic environment and train,” he said.

The Army is bringing a new system online that tracks physical training scores, weapons qualification levels and scores for other service skills for individuals in the real world and links them to that person’s avatar in the Army’s virtual environment, he added.

“Picture this,” Krogh said. “If I don’t do well on a PT test, my avatar will not run as fast or move as quick or sustain in combat as long as another soldier who has a better PT score in the real world.”

The same thing will happen for others skills, he said.

“If I am out of tolerance for my weapons training or I have only shot marksman as opposed to sharpshooter or expert, then my PH/PK -- probability of hit/probability of kill -- in the simulation goes way down, because I’m not as highly skilled in the real world.”

Training in the virtual world would mirror training in the real world, the colonel said.

Practice with firearms online “would help you prepare so that when you went to the real range, you’d have had that continuous experience of engaging the targets and putting the weapon into service,” he said.

Soldiers couldn’t do physical training online, but in seeing where they stand in relation to their peers, Krogh said, “a soldier would realize, ‘I’ve got to lose some weight and do better on the PT test, because when I go online my squad is always leaving me behind.’”

Despite progress the Army is just getting started, Krogh said.

“I would say within the next two years we’ll be able to put many of these capabilities in place,” he said.

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ONR Recruits DoD Community for Online Wargame

By Office of Naval Research Public Affairs

ARLINGTON (NNS) -- The Office of Naval Research (ONR) announced May 9 that it intends to launch a new Internet wargame May 16, recruiting a community of more than 1,000 players to collaborate on solving real-world problems facing the Navy.

Scheduled to run for three weeks, the Massive Multiplayer Online Wargame Leveraging the Internet (MMOWGLI) exercise will recruit online players from across the government to suggest ways of combating piracy off the coast of Somalia.

"MMOWGLI is an online game designed to find and collectively grow breakthrough ideas to some of the Navy's most complex problems--those 21st-century threats that demand new forms of collaboration and truly outlying ideas," said Dr. Larry Schuette, ONR's director of innovation, whose office is managing the project.

The piracy scenario was chosen as a means to demonstrate the platform, but MMOWGLI itself can be applied to any scenario, officials said.

ONR intends to produce varying results from a diverse group of players drawn from the ranks of academia, defense, and government and nongovernment organizations. The plan is for MMOWGLI to identify solutions to difficult challenges by tapping into the intellectual capital of a broader community.

"We hope MMOWGLI will help us to understand what happens when your insights are combined with the observations and actions of another player," Schuette added. "Will that fusion result in a game-changing idea or solution, or will the MMOWGLI platform teach us something about our traditional thought processes?"

MMOWGLI will also be a template for aiding future users faced with their own complex problems, said Garth Jensen, director of innovation Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock division, who is leading the project.

"At this stage, however, MMOWGLI is a simply a pilot/demonstration project," Jensen said. "Therefore, we are exploring whether doing something like MMOWGLI within Navy is feasible, and if so, what we might learn from the experience."

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Institute for the Future and the Naval Postgraduate School are partnering with ONR on the MMOWGLI project.

About the Office of Naval Research

The Department of the Navy's Office of Naval Research (ONR) provides the science and technology necessary to maintain the Navy and Marine Corps' technological advantage. Through its affiliates, ONR is a leader in science and technology with engagement in 50 states, 70 countries, 1,035 institutions of higher learning and 914 industry partners. ONR employs approximately 1,400 people, comprising uniformed, civilian and contract personnel, with additional employees at the Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C.

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Air Force Eyes New Learning Systems in ‘Second Life’

By Cheryl Pellerin

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 9, 2011 – In a pasture outside Dayton, Ohio, Wilbur and Orville Wright created the first practical airplane and taught themselves to fly it.

They called the place Huffman Prairie and flew the 1905 Wright Flyer III into history on that rough patch of land.

More than 100 years later, Air Force pioneers are creating a legacy in another place called Huffman Prairie, this one in a virtual world called “Second Life.”

“What really drew us out to [the virtual world] was this wonderful opportunity to interact and connect with people on a global scale and with high levels of creativity,” Andrew Stricker of the Air Force’s Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base’s Gunter Annex in Montgomery, Ala., told American Forces Press Service.

“We thought Second Life was perfect for doing innovation work in the Department of Defense,” said Stricker, whose team is part of Air University’s innovations and integration division.

The online world -- one of many now operating in cyberspace -- was launched by San Francisco-based Linden Lab in 2003. Second Life has 20 million registered user accounts from all over the world and is populated by avatars, or digital representations that users create for themselves.

Second Life residents explore the world, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services.

All sorts of organizations, institutions and companies have established islands or activities in Second Life, including colleges and universities, libraries, government agencies, embassies, scientific research groups, religious organizations, and national defense ministries and departments, including the U.S. Defense Department and all of the services.

Stricker and his team help to design, develop and implement new learning technologies and standards into Air Force and professional military education programs.

The Air Force is exploring several virtual worlds for its work in education and has several prototype virtual learning communities in Second Life. These include MyBase -- a virtual Air Force base for recruiting, training, education and operations -- and different versions of Huffman Prairie called Huffman Prairie Chi, Huffman Prairie Omega, and others.

With MyBase, Air Force Maj. Gen. Erwin F. Lessel wanted an immersive experience that people could use to see what being in the Air Force is like, Stricker said.

At the time, Lessel -- who retired in 2010 -- was director of plans, programs, requirements and assessments for the Air Force. One of his responsibilities was developing and implementing future learning concepts.

“We created all these different roles that people can learn about as they travel through MyBase in Second Life -- what it’s like to be a chaplain in the Air Force, what it’s like to be part of a medical team, to be in basic military training, to be a pilot.”

During a recent interview, Stricker joined Patrick “Mike” McCrocklin, chief of the innovations and integrations division in Air University’s education logistics and communications directorate, and Evelyn Milton, an information technology program analyst in the same division.

From MyBase, Milton said, avatars can “teleport or fly over to another region next to it and see a replication of a Navy area. The Naval Undersea Warfare Center out of Rhode Island is to the west of us in Second Life.”

To the north of MyBase are two Army sections, she said, one called OneSource, a virtual community that lets geographically dispersed soldiers, family members and friends stay in touch.

“Each region we have out there is dedicated to some particular area of learning,” McCrocklin said. “Huffman Prairie Gamma, for instance, is dedicated to educational informatics. MyBase Zeta is our gaming range.”

At MyBase Zeta, the Air Force built a training game called “Operation Relief Worker Rescue Challenge” to teach Air Force Academy cadets about leadership.

“We got together with the Air Force Academy and the Center for Creative Leadership,” Stricker said, “and built a game where players had to go into the virtual world and rescue hostages who had been taken captive.”

During the challenge, the players operate in a specific scenario under a deadline and have to share information and work together.

On the gaming range, avatars also freely interact with terrain, buildings, devices and equipment. The range has systems that can identify, track and score team members and follow voice and text communication among them.

There are briefing rooms, video recordings of game activity, target damage and scoring, simulated weather, day or night conditions, assignment of equipment and tools to each team member, and goal-oriented task action, timing and feedback controls for use by game referees.

Stricker said the leadership game was chosen as an example of interactions and innovations among people, organizations, processes and technology in the 2009 book, “Crosscutting Issues in International Transformation,” published by National Defense University.

In 2010, the Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge recognized another Air University project.

The challenge is an annual, open, global call for the best virtual world implementations on a specific topic.

The Army Research Laboratory Simulation and Training Technology Center leads the effort, and in 2010 the topic was training, with categories for collaboration, skill building, instruction and visualization.

The $25,000 grand prize went to Stricker, McCrocklin and Cynthia Calongne of Air University for the Mars Expedition Strategy Challenge.

Working with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Stricker said, “we basically took commission studies the White House sponsored on human space flight options for the future of the United States, and made a game out of it.”

In its recommendation, the commission had to weigh technology and cost issues, competitive stances for the country, political considerations and more.

“In this game, you’re presented with the same kind of evidence the commission interacted with and you have to formulate your own position and articulate why you’ve taken it,” Stricker said.

“At the end of the game, you’re able to compare your recommendation to the commission’s,” he added, “and people tell us it’s a fun thing to do to see how close you’ve come.”

Virtual worlds have the potential to transform education, Stricker said, by taking students on a journey that goes beyond reading words in a textbook.

“As students must do in real life,” he said, in virtual-world learning situations “they have to develop skill sets to read the environment around them, collect data, interpret it, rationalize through understanding how to weigh the evidence, and then synthesize it and take a position.”

In Second Life and other virtual worlds, Stricker said, his team creates scenarios that allow students to manipulate pieces of a problem and see the consequences of their choices.

“You have the students build a model of what they think they understand,” he said. “Say if you’re a meteorologist in the Air Force and you’re trying to understand the effects of certain geographic characteristics on weather flow patterns. Then you can manipulate the model and see the consequences.”

The team has built similar models for sustaining geothermal energy and, with the Air Force Institute of Technology, for understanding the effects of materials and atmospheric conditions on radar signals.

It’s like a revolution that’s occurring in what we can teach our students,” Stricker said. “Now students who may have had a hard time learning [from a book] can see a visualization. Our students are telling us that this is profound.”

Virtual worlds are inherently collaborative, Stricker said, for students as well as for those who teach.

Multiple universities and agencies participate in every single Air Force virtual world project, he added.

“We think a really exciting future is shaping up [in virtual words],” Stricker said, “where we’re breaking down walls across the services [and] finding common ground.”

When Stricker and McCrocklin first discovered Second Life, they were drawn in by innovation occurring among people who collaborated across disciplines involving art, education and computer science, and across industry and government.

“We’re big believers in bringing people together who otherwise wouldn’t know the other groups exist,” Stricker said. Hetold a story about their early days in Second Life.

One day at virtual Huffman Prairie, where they had built a 1920s airfield, he said, their avatars were testing an unmanned aerial vehicle.

“We were flying this thing around in front of our virtual hangars,” Stricker said, “and an avatar we’d never seen walks up and says, ‘Are you Dr. Stricker?’

Stricker, whose Second Life avatar is called Spinoza, was surprised, but said yes. The other avatar said, “Hold on, I’ll go get my dad.”

“Hi, I’m General Lessel,” the director of Air Force plans, programs, requirements and assessments said over his son’s Second Life voice chat. “I heard about you guys out here. I only have a few minutes, but tell me a little about what you’re doing.”

“For the next hour and a half, we walked him around and showed him stuff,” Stricker said. “From that experience, he flew out here … and sat down with Mike’s team.”

Soon after, Sticker said, “he asked us to demonstrate what we could do with virtual worlds for the Air Force.”

“It matters a great deal that DOD is into [virtual worlds] right now,” Stricker said, “so we understand and can leverage and gain from our experiences how to go forward in the future.”

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Virtual Worlds Form Defense Training Frontier

By Cheryl Pellerin

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 9, 2011 – Five years from now, if Frank C. DiGiovanni has his way, warfighters from every service will learn aspects of their trade on a world in cyberspace.

The Defense Department will save money, time, and ultimately, lives, he said, and it’s his job to make that virtual world a reality.

DiGiovanni is director of training readiness and strategy in the office of the deputy assistant secretary of defense for readiness. He’s also a retired Air Force colonel and a senior aviator.

“I’d love to see it happen in the next 18 months to two years,” DiGiovanni said in an interview with American Forces Press Service. “Realistically, a full-up world is probably five years away.”

Over the next five years, the Defense Department will build that world in cyberspace, where the men and women of the armed forces will take another step forward in the transition from analog to digital technology that began with the public Internet and DOD websites.

A virtual world is a computer-based simulated environment that’s available 24 hours a day. Users create digital representations of themselves, called “avatars,” that build out the world, creating content and communicating with each other.

Second Life is one of many virtual worlds that exist in cyberspace. It opened in 2003, created by Linden Lab, a San Francisco-based company founded in 1999 by Philip Rosedale to create a new form of shared experience.

Second Life residents -- 20 million and rising, from hundreds of countries -- build and own the world’s digital infrastructure. This includes homes, vehicles, campuses of real-life universities, museums, nightclubs, stores, libraries, landscapes, games, islands, companies, government organizations and military bases.

A handful of U.S. government agencies have facilities of varying complexity and interaction in Second Life.

These include NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Institutes of Health and its National Library of Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Homeland Security, the House of Representatives and more every day.

The Defense Department’s virtual world may be five years away, but the Army, Navy and Air Force all have public and private facilities in Second Life, and in other virtual worlds, including Teleplace and OpenSimulator.

In Second Life, U.S. military activities take place on a growing collection of islands called “Military Islands.”

MiLands was established in 2008 by Doug Maxwell, formerly of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center and now science and technology manager for virtual world and strategic applications at the Army Simulation and Training Technology Center in Orlando, Fla. MiLands includes the Air Force Air Education and Training Command and Air University, the Naval Undersea Warfare Command and other Navy projects, a Marine Corps island, several Army groups and Coalition Island, a military hub.

Each group uses Second Life for activities that include training, education, collaboration and research.

DiGiovanni praises these efforts as “pioneering work done by the services and some people with great vision who really saw the potential” of virtual worlds for military uses.

“But we felt it was ad hoc,” DiGiovanni said.

For the DOD virtual world experts are working on “a governance model that makes sense” in which everyone in the world can participate, DiGiovanni said, much like the Constitution allows American citizens to participate in their government.

“A governance model allows you to take all the efforts that are going on and synchronize them, integrate them, so you have a comprehensive whole, and not four separate efforts,” he added.

“I don’t want four separate worlds, I want one world … to be able to leverage all that content building that’s being done by everyone out there,” the director said.

DiGiovanni began thinking about emerging technologies when he was asked to develop a training environment that was available globally, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Some of the inspiration for virtual world military training came from massively multiplayer online games, such as Halo and Call of Duty, he said.

“When you look at the ability to go to an online game, pick a team ad hoc, decide on the tactic and then start the game,” DiGiovanni added, “that’s when you think, if we can do that in the commercial world, the Defense Department needs a similar capability.”

A “perfect storm” of resource constraints, global repositioning of troops coming home from the Middle East, and competing demands for land, air and maritime training capability makes it critical to develop a virtual training capability, he said.

Such an environment, DiGiovanni said, must be “augmented with some type of physical training to make sure that what you’re learning in the virtual world can be exported to the real world.”

Virtual training can be very effective, he added, and can help people become much more proficient in the limited amount of time and space available with live resources.

The Strategic Plan for the Next Generation of Training for the Department of Defense, published in 2010, DiGiovanni said, discusses “leveraging emerging technologies to enhance our training capabilities.”

The plan was fully vetted across all four services and signed by Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III, he added.

Essential features of a technology-based training environment, the report says, include synchronizing “live and virtual training operations in near-real time to enable realistic simulation of sensors, replication of visual cues and platform interactions [among] live, virtual and constructive participants.”

DiGiovanni and his staff meet with industry experts and consult regularly with the technological pioneers who are building virtual capacity today for the military services.

Carl Rosengrant, senior technical adviser for training readiness and strategy, said his office would soon receive the results of a study by industry experts to help DOD define the framework and tools needed to develop the Defense Department online world.

When the report is written and vetted with technology experts in the military services, DiGiovanni said, “We think we’ll be able to put the construct together that would allow us to build a world.”

American culture is well postured to lead a revolution in the use of the virtual training environment, DiGiovanni said.

“I challenge everyone to put their pioneering spirit on,” he said, “think about where technology can take us, and then let’s go there together.”

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MMOWGLI: An Experiment in Generating Collective Intelligence

By John Ohab

Garth Jensen is currently the Director of Innovation at the Carderock Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center. Garth was previously an Office of Naval Research Science Advisor at the Pentagon.

mmowgli is both the coolest project I have ever worked on and the hardest to describe in words, but here it goes: mmowgli is an experiment in generating collective intelligence and a pilot project being developed by the Office of Naval Research.

Beyond that, mmowgli is ultimately the answer to a few questions, ones that haunted me every day during my tour as a Science Advisor at the Pentagon: why did I experience such a disconnect between technologists and “innovators,” on one hand, and warfighters and end users on the other? Why didn’t “game changing innovations” generate more enthusiasm from those who were “in the game?” And what was I doing to make it better?

As my Pentagon tour drew to a close, these questions nagged at me and morphed into a thousand others: What if we took a heavy, formal approach, and made it lighter and more of a continuous conversation instead of a blueprint? What if you didn’t need a fully formed idea to make a contribution? What if ideas, even half-formed ones, could meet up in space and recombine with other ideas to form new ones? What if this conversation engaged more stakeholders and tolerated more excursions? Finally, what if this conversation became so rich and compelling that, instead of truncating the debate, it actually enlarged the universe of possibilities?

A pivotal moment occurred as these questions were swirling around in my head. I attended a speech by Marina Gorbis, Executive Director of The Institute for the Future. What she presented became the kernel of an idea that grew into mmowgli. Marina showed me a world where Alternate Reality Games were being used to engage the imaginations of thousands players to harness fresh insights; where Massive Multiplayer Forecasting Games were redefining how we look at technology horizons; where companies like IBM were using Innovation Jams to create value across their entire workforce and with their stakeholders; and where the notion of innovation as a social phenomenon was moving to the fore.

From there, it was a short leap for me to connect the dots between Marina’s world and my own struggles with innovation — mmowgli was born. In reality, it wasn’t quite that easy. We’ve had to persist through all of the typical hurdles associated with any first of its kind innovation. But, now that we’re almost there, we’ve got a really engaging game in store, and I’m excited about the launch.

mmowgli goes live in just a few weeks. You can register for the game at http://mmowgli.nps.edu/mmowgli. I’m looking forward to meeting you online during the game.

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ONR Seeks to Strengthen Tomorrow's Leaders Through Gaming

By Katherine H. Crawford, Office of Naval Research Public Affairs

ARLINGTON, Va. (NNS) -- The Office of Naval Research announced April 18 that it is investing in today's youth and tomorrow's technical workforce using computer-based applications similar to programs originally designed for Navy recruits.

Playing a 3-D video game developed by ONR, the science and technology provider for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, recruits are learning at-sea safety long before setting sail. And now, applying the same underlying science in public education, digital tutors are helping high-school students to master math.

Program Officer Dr. Ray Perez leads ONR's Cognitive Science of Learning program. In collaboration with the Naval Service Training Command (NSTC) and a team of academic researchers, Perez and his colleagues are developing advanced training and education techniques with significant cost savings for the U.S. Navy.

"Training and education are national defense priorities," Perez said. "We're seeing an influx of recruits who are not as well equipped to handle the technological complexities of today's Navy, and we cannot wait for the standard education practices to fix that."

Virtual Learning Helps Recruits Retain Skills

Since fires and floods present the greatest threats on a ship or submarine, each recruit must complete training on containing a fire, controlling a flood and rescuing personnel during their initial seven-week boot camp. On completion, learned skills must be demonstrated on a capstone event or exam. For those who fail, it's back for another round of training.

NSTC Great Lakes employs computer-based simulations to measure individual performance and help recruits prepare for their final assessment. The first-person game emphasizes operational skills relating to flood and fire control and preventing casualties aboard ship � a critical skill in helping trainees prepare for duty at sea.

"During the game, users are given real-time feedback on their performance as well as guided instruction when they run into different challenges or have difficulty obtaining individual objectives," said John Drake, director of learning sciences at NSTC.

The results speak for themselves -- after gaming, recruits make 50 percent fewer errors, and locate ship or submarine compartments in 50 percent less time. In a study measuring how much information recruits retain after boot camp, game-playing recruits retained 83 percent of their reading gains, almost four times more than their counterparts.

Drake attributes improved scores to the appeal of video games among men and women who have grown up with consoles such as Nintendo, Xbox and PlayStation.

"They seem to align better with the learning preferences of this generation and be the next step in the direction that training needs to go," Drake said.

Among competitive trainees, the game has evolved into an extracurricular opportunity to excel.

"What we find is that during off-duty time, recruits play the game," Perez said. "You get points for how well you perform your tasks. For example, at NSTC Great Lakes, dormitories compete to see who gets the highest score."

At NSTC, computer-based games focus on teaching recruits their individual roles in a crisis situation, but it's equally important that seasoned Sailors learn and refresh on operating in a team setting.

Working with the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at the University of California, Los Angeles (CRESST/UCLA), ONR has developed the game, 'Damage Control,' to help prepare Sailors for deployment. Currently in use at the Center for Naval Engineering in Norfolk, the simulation teaches Sailors what actions to take, and with which people and equipment at the appropriate time.

"The goal for the player is to manage what's called the 'repair locker,' a collection of people who are responsible � like a fire department � for responding to different fires or floods that may break out in that particular area of the ship," said Alan Koenig, CRESST/UCLA senior researcher."

Real-Time Learning Analysis

While its ability to engage players is one factor in its success against more traditional learning exercises, the game's built-in analysis tools rate equally as high among instructors and evaluators.

During play, the computer measures anxiety levels based on data retrieved from electronic sensors attached to the recruit. As students experience difficulty or frustration, the game reverts back to more basic tasks before advancing too far ahead. The game is continuously adjusting difficulty levels based on the player's ability.

The game allows players to assume different roles � such as repair locker leader, investigator and fire team member � and gives them access to casualty checklists that update automatically based on their actions.

'Damage Control' offers real-time feedback and captures data for reporting and future enhancement purposes. The game's back-end leverages graphic models of the relationships and probabilities among concepts and procedures that are critical to completion of the task. The computer-based game is integrated with the network in real time to provide analysis for after-action review. Performance data is reviewed post-game to measure proficiencies and can be displayed in multiple formats, including charts, curve graphs and checklists. The data are analyzed both within game and across games (over time) to model changes in knowledge, skills and abilities in key areas.

"More Without More"

The one-on-one instruction afforded by computer-based games is proving not only effective, but also economical. These applications save instructor expenses as well as overhead costs, such as building maintenance and classroom materials, since the instruction can take place almost anywhere.

Additionally, ONR seeks to lessen the cost of digital tutor development by working with partners to develop game-authoring tools. These products would enable the development of new games at a fraction of the cost and time while allowing the Navy to emphasize quality in education.

Currently reviewing Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) proposals, Perez sees these tools as a means to counter the shrinking numbers of qualified naval instructors due to retirement and attrition.

"Ideally, in the future, it could be that we have these games available to recruits as they come in to lessen the time it takes them to learn some basic information; but more importantly, lessen the time for them to become experts," he said.

Applying Naval Science to High School Learning

The use of similar technologies may have wider implications within the public school system. ONR-sponsored researchers at Arizona State University have demonstrated the success of digital tutors among algebra students at Mountain Point High School, raising student grade levels.

"Using digital training standardizes what kids learn, and can increase learning by one third and do it in one third less time and at one third the cost," Perez said.

From the Navy's perspective, digital media could also lure students toward science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines and provide them with critically needed technical skills that are important to the Navy. These one-on-one digital tutors and learning games could boost learning achievement in the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) schools, in keeping with Presidential Study Directive 9.

In response to the directive, the January 2011 "Strengthening our Military Families: Meeting America's Commitment" report proposes new measures to improve the quality of life for service members and their families. The Defense Department has pledged to boost educational excellence in military schools by investing in research, development and demonstration projects. The move, which supports one of four priorities outlined in the report, could advance DoDEA schools as leaders in advanced learning technologies.

Taking the STEM lead for the U.S. Navy, ONR will host the 2011 Naval STEM Forum in June, where cognitive learning sciences and educational initiatives � including computer-based training � will fuel an ambitious agenda.

However it is used, computer-based training is opening new possibilities for the Navy and beyond. Senior researcher Koenig predicts, "The ONR emphasis on this particular project is really quite groundbreaking. It will open doors for a lot of great things in the future."

The Department of the Navy's Office of Naval Research (ONR) provides the science and technology necessary to maintain the Navy and Marine Corps' technological advantage. Through its affiliates, ONR is a leader in science and technology with engagement in 50 states, 70 countries, 1,035 institutions of higher learning and 914 industry partners. ONR employs approximately 1,400 people, comprising uniformed, civilian and contract personnel, with additional employees at the Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C.

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