An application for trainers to rapidly create and control HAZMAT emergency response scenarios in online immersive virtual environments for self-paced and team learning.

 描述（由申请人提供）：交互式在线多用户虚拟学习环境（MUVLE）已被证明是非常有效的工人健康和安全培训的交付。如果能够以较低的成本方便地改变MUVLE，以适应迅速变化的学习需求，那么MUVLE的投资回报率就会大大增加。在第一阶段，成功地开发了一个最小的可行应用程序，说明了我们对危险品和危险品操作员培训方案的方法。在第二阶段，我们的目标是调整我们的应用程序在360沉浸式虚拟环境中的使用，在边做边学的空间中推进图书馆场景资产的交互性，应用程序的控制和可视化功能，验证主题内容，并通过定性和定量评估对我们的产品进行严格的评估。我们的目标是为Hazmat和应急准备培训师提供一个应用程序，使他们能够快速创建和修改MUVLE，以匹配他们所需的培训场景，而无需求助于专门的设计师和程序员团队，也无需在与其核心专业技能无关的领域进行额外的广泛培训。主题专家需要解决需要在虚拟学习环境中进行的真实的更改，以适应（1）当前的学生技能集，（2）当前的教学目标，（3）各种班级规模，（4）当前的学生表现评估要求和（5）频繁且经常出乎意料的焦点从理论到实践的转变，然后返回，五是课程内容变化频繁。抵制适应的MUVLEs往往会限制教师或主题专家的创造性机会，他们需要在虚拟学习环境中用先进的、意想不到的、引人入胜的和响应式的场景来挑战学生。许多虚拟现实培训应用程序旨在教授可以通过定义良好的决策树封装的技能。这种培训经验虽然非常需要，而且很容易重复，对练习技能很有用，但往往是线性的，可能会限制学生为解决给定问题而提出的创造性解决方案的范围。我们提出的赠款申请将允许主题专家在演习进行中实时创建和修改MUVLE，创建自定义培训场景，并通过虚拟学习环境中可访问的通用用户界面监控学员活动。虽然我们的应用程序可以用于分期自定进度，单一用户的虚拟培训经验，其优势在于它能够支持大规模的虚拟团队培训 演习我们利用危险品应急响应培训专家的专业知识来验证我们产品的教育质量。我们将把我们丰富的虚拟3D内容库分割成主题特定的内容包，这些内容包将单独出售，并以可直接导入内容生成和管理应用程序的格式提供。我们的潜在目标客户包括危险品和安全培训中心以及需要使用定制MUVLE来支持培训的企业。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Interactive online multiuser virtual learning environments (MUVLEs) have been shown to be highly effective for the delivery of health and safety training for workers. The return on investment for MUVLEs increases significantly if the latter can be changed easily and inexpensively to match rapidly evolving learning needs. Under Phase I a minimal viable application was successfully developed illustrating our approach for Hazmat and Hazwoper training scenarios. In Phase II we aim to adapt our application for use in 360 immersive virtual environments, advance interactivity of scenario assets of the library in the learning-by-doing space, control and visualization functionalities of the application, validate subject matter content and conduct rigorous assessment of our product through qualitative and quantitative evaluations. Our goal is to provide Hazmat and emergency preparedness trainers with an application that will allow them to rapidly create and modify MUVLEs to match the training scenarios they need for their classes without the necessity to have recourse to a dedicated team of designers and programmers or additional extensive training in domains not relevant to their core professional skills. Subject matter experts need to address changes that are needed to be made in real time to a virtual learning environment in order to adapt to (1) current student skill set, (2) to immediate teaching goals, (3) to various class sizes, (4) to the current student performance evaluation requirements and (5) to the frequent and often, unanticipated, shifts in focus from theory to practice and back, and last but not least (5) to frequent changes in course contents. MUVLEs that resist adaptation tends to limit the creative opportunities for teachers or subject matter experts who need to challenge their students with advanced, unanticipated, engaging and responsive scenarios in the virtual learning environment. Many virtual reality training applications are designed to teach skills that can be encapsulated by well-defined decision trees. Such training experiences while being much needed, and easily repeatable, and useful for practicing skills, tend to be linear and may limit the range of creative solutions that students may come up with to solve a given problem. Our proposed grant application will allow subject matter experts to create and modify MUVLEs in real-time while an exercise is in progress, to create custom training scenarios, and to monitor trainee activities through a common user interface accessible within the virtual learning environment. While our application can be used for staging self-paced, single user virtual training experiences, its strength lies in its ability to support large scale virtual team training exercises. We use the expertise of Hazmat Emergency Response training experts to validate the educational quality of our product. We will segment our extensive library of virtual 3D content into subject specific content packs that will be sold separately and available in a format that can be imported directly into the content generation and management application. Our potential target clients include Hazmat and safety training centers and businesses that require access to custom MUVLEs to support their training.