Automating Team Competency Assessment in Support of Adaptive Dynamic Simulations

Team training in online, simulated environments can improve teamwork skills and task performance skills in a team setting. Teamwork assessment often relies on human observers. Instructors, team leaders, or other observers typically assess complex team competencies using checklists of observed behavior markers to infer performance. Automation can reduce training bottlenecks, provide evidence for objective assessment, and increase the impact of team training. A software capability is being developed to automate team assessments in dynamic online simulations. The simulations are dynamic to the extent that team actions and performance can change the progression of simulation events, assessment context, and the expected behavior of individuals contributing to team performance. A goal of automation design is to enhance usability for non-technical personnel to select, configure, reuse, and interpret team assessments in dynamic simulations. As a result of the reusable design, the assessments can generalize across different simulation software, settings, and scenarios. This paper describes work in progress on the research and development of an automated team assessment capability for the US Army’s Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutoring (GIFT), an open source adaptive instructional architecture.