Virtual systems have existed as a military training technique for several decades, initially implemented to rehearse combat scenarios and flight patterns in a safe environment. The U.S. Army has recently identified virtual role-play as an innovative and highly prioritized training method for cultural awareness as well as it has become clear that a number of avoidable conflicts ensue when members from one culture misunderstand or misinterpret those from another.Our team collaborated with Bohemia Interactive Solutions (BIS) and Alelo, Inc. to develop several virtual role-playing scenarios based in urban Afghanistan that allow soldiers to practice cross-cultural interactions in a safe environment using the Virtual Battlespace (VBS3) platform. We created two game-based scenarios that guide the user, represented as a virtual avatar, through cultural interactions such as common greetings, bartering in a traditional market, and discussing local concerns in a council setting. Dr. Lewis Johnson, Alelo CEO and co-founder, introduced our team to perspective taking. This technique, where the trainee experiences a scenario from the host national's perspective instead of his or her own, is a key component in our simulations. After running a handful of students through beta testing of our prototype, we received positive feedback about the value-add from perspective taking as well as cultural knowledge gained from the simulation as a whole.
The need for cultural training for members of the military, and supporting government and industrial organizations, has become more important because of the increasing expectations of effective collaborations between people of different cultures in order to achieve common security objectives. Additionally, the number and mix of countries, and cultural groups within those countries, make traditional classroom training less feasible. While good simulations have been built for cultural understanding, they have not been developed widely or used for pre-deployment training. This paper describes and evaluates an avatar-based game for pre-deployment training. The game is built around two scenarios from the Afghan culture: a market scenario, and a local leadership council scenario. The game also allows participants to reverse roles and play the part of an Afghan interacting with an American solider. To evaluate this avatar-based game, we developed an experimental design to test the effectiveness of the game versus commonly used video instruction, and to test the effectiveness of role reversals in training with games. Results show that participants trained with the avatarbased game had significantly improved understanding of Afghan culture (p < 0:01). However, role reversal did not improve performance. Additionally, responses to a questionnaire showed that participants in the avatar-based game had a much greater appreciation for their understanding of the Afghan culture than the more video-trained control group.
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