Monitoring distributed teamwork training

Abstract: In team collaboration training, especially when the training is distributed on the net, it exists a problem of identifying the students' collaboration and work processes. An important design task when developing distributed interactive simulation systems for team training is therefore to define a proper monitoring functionality that will help training managers to evaluate the training. Thus a goal of a computer-based monitoring system is to give training managers help in understanding and assessing the performance of the trainees. This thesis deals with the design and implementation of monitoring strategies for distributed collaboration training. The aim has been to explore different automatic monitoring strategies, and how they can help a training manger in their task of understanding the students' collaboration during a training session. To explore possible monitoring strategies, a distributed, net-based micro-world simulation and training system, C3Fire, has been developed and three series of experiments has been performed. C3Fire provides a Command, Control and Communication training environment that can be used for team collaboration training of emergency management tasks. The training domain, which is forest fire fighting, acts as a micro-world, which creates a good dynamic environment for the trainees. In the three performed studies a total of 192 persons have participated as students. A 132 of these were computer-literate undergraduate students and 60 professional military officers. In these studies four monitoring goals have been explored: the effectiveness of the teams, the information distribution in the organisation, the students situation awareness, and the students work and collaboration methods.