Design Interactive, Inc. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N152-108

Description

Mission readiness is highly dependent upon the quality of instruction units receive; thus, it is critical that military instructors develop instructional competencies, along with domain expertise, to adequately promote relevant KSAs among trainees. Unlike civilian career educators, military instructors are not often afforded the time or resources to fully develop their teaching skills prior to instructional duties. Design Interactive, Inc. proposes a computer-based training tool to accelerate instructor development using methods such as video-modeling and guided instruction both in and out of the classroom. Phase I will demonstrate capabilities for the Interactive Military Instructor Training and Assessment TEchnology (IMITATE), a platform facilitating development of effective training material to advance military instructors from novice to master level. IMITATE will: (1) support delivery of multiple training methods for maximizing instructor learning within our Prepare, Practice, Assess framework, (2) provide features for organizing digital assets for creating an archive of lessons from reusable content, (3) function from a flexible architecture that affords rapid adaptation for quick transition to new contexts, and (4) include an easy to use interface to support operational test/evaluation, as well as ongoing research in evaluating the training methods and system deigns that most effectively expedite learning for novice instructors.