Critical Thinking Training

Organization:

Novonics Tactical Training Lab

Dev Category:

Business

Release Year:

2007

Novonics TTL presents a serious game solution for teaching critical thinking skills to junior Navy officers by way of presenting real-life instructional scenarios in an engaging self-reinforcing environment. The game screenplay is based on a series of “sea stories” united under an overarching storyline of a Division Officer’s typical day on the job. During the game, the learner is presented with both routine and non-routine situations requiring decision making and review of outcomes. In addition to raising the learner awareness about the decisions and their respective outcomes, this game serves as “practiceware” for mastering the critical thinking process “CASE”.

Game Overview

A junior Navy officer will apply the critical thinking process “CASE” to solve leadership challenges.

In support of the CNL leadership curricula, Novonics TTL developed a game-based training prototype for teaching critical thinking skills to junior Navy leadership by way of presenting real-life scenarios in an engaging self-reinforcing environment. In concert with the Science of Learning, our critical thinking training prototype targets a specific set of cognitive skills (Interpretation, Analysis, Inference, Strategy Formation, Reflection, Judgement, Self-Regulation) and employs instructional techniques (Learning by doing, Guided discovery, Coaching, Learning from mistakes, Situated learning) and game elements (Challenge, Rules/controls, Fantasy/mystery, Sensory stimuli, Humor, Debrief).

The game screenplay is based on a series of original Navy life experiences, or “sea stories” provided by Navy SMEs. During the instructional scenarios, the learner is presented with both routine and non-routine situations requiring decision making and review of outcomes. In addition to raising the learner awareness between decisions and their respective outcomes, the training prototype serves as “practiceware” for mastering the critical thinking process “CASE”.

Junior Navy officer

At the heart of this approach lies a critical thinking process methodology, known as CASE, which comprises a series of cognitive stages ranging from collecting information and assessing a situation to selecting a decision and evaluating and monitoring its respective outcomes. Based on the theoretical foundations by J. Freeman and M. Cohen, the CASE methodology was developed and validated during several research efforts sponsored by the Department of the Navy to support the Tactical Decision Making Under Stress (TADMUS) program.

To address the training needs of the modern Navy, an applied research effort was launched to prove out an experimental approach of using advanced gaming technology for leadership training. This effort culminated in the development of a training prototype for teaching critical thinking skills to the junior Navy officers by way of presenting real-life instructional scenarios in an engaging self-reinforcing environment in support of the leadership curricula at the Center for Naval Leadership (CNL).

A number of organizations contributed to defining research foundations, training requirements, and instructional strategies for this research effort. The Navy Human Performance Center (HPC), Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division (NAWC TSD), National Center for Excellence in Distance Learning (NCEDL), the Center for Naval Leadership (CNL), and Novonics Training Technology Lab (TTL) have done extensive work to leverage existing research in critical thinking, leadership, science of learning, and simulation and game development to be applied towards developing a training methodology and a prototype that can eventually serve the Navy Total Force.

Critical Thinking Training

Game Overview

Game Specs

Game Engine

Operating System

Platform

Game Video

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