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Best Social Media Crowdsourcing Game
The overarching goal of Extend the Shield was to develop an interactive, visual training game to teach the non-intuitive concepts of cooperative engagement capabilities in a variety of realistic anti-air warfare scenarios.
The goal of Extend the Shield is to provide trainees with an opportunity to establish a network of assets (i.e., ships, aircraft) that includes sensors, communications capabilities, and weapons. The trainee places these assets in varying configurations, while considering the benefits and weaknesses. When users work with the Extend the Shield training, they are guided through a set of missions that gradually increase in difficulty. The first missions just focus on moving and firing capabilities. Once the trainee has developed some fluency in this interaction, the missions become more complex. Sensors are added in for line of sight. Then communications capabilities are included. Finally, different types of assets are added to the missions.
Active duty sailors
Missions are “graded” as “pass/fail” based on pre-determined criteria that are clearly presented to the trainee prior to a mission. These include tasks such as: destroy the enemy, meet a certain percentage of enemy destroyed, keep blue force assets from being destroyed or minimize losses to a certain percentage, or fire fewer than a given number of missiles. Missions include a time limit. In addition, specific criteria might be given, such as “do not fire weapons unless the track quality is 90% or better.” If the trainee violates that requirement, they fail the mission. If the trainee meets the requirements, they pass the mission. When the trainee completes the mission, they are given specific feedback on their performance.