Bianca Woods
Masters Thesis for Education Media Design and Technology
Full Sail University
March 21, 2010
Abstract
Training is key to the development of skills, but how best should these skills be trained? This paper shows that the problem of insufficient practice, particularly of skills that must be performed under stress, can be addressed using computer software and a distinct development method. Research indicates that significant rehearsal is needed for skill mastery, that stress degrades the ability to perform tasks, and that increased task practice can lead to improved task competency. This paper suggests that the solution to skill rehearsal requirements for high-stress jobs, taking into account research regarding the effects of stress, is the use of simulation software to provide a means for individuals to explore deliberate practice with the goal of skill mastery.
To read the full thesis, click here.
Table of Contents
Introduction 4
Thesis Statement 4
Educational Significance 4
Definition of Terms 5
Literature Review 6
Current and Past Solutions to Thesis Problem 14
Proposed Solution to Thesis Problem 15
Integration of Proposed Solution With Past and Current Solutions 23
Conclusions 24
Suggestions for Further Research 25
References 27
Introduction
Rehearsing any skill is key to moving from the beginner to expert state. Yet, so often companies send their employees out to perform a skill that they have very few hours of practice with. In many cases, people can make do with the training they do receive, but in high-stress situations where the proper decision must be made in the blink of an eye, expert-level mastery can be the difference between success and complete failure. The challenge is for companies to easily and affordably give their employees enough practice with new tasks, particularly those that are performed under high-stress situations.
Thesis Statement
Studies show that stress degrades the ability to perform unmastered tasks, and that the key to task mastery is significant deliberate practice. A cost-effective yet instructionally sound solution to this dilemma is to provide virtual skill rehearsal through a carefully designed simulation video game.
Educational Significance
The education significance of the proposed software is not as a replacement for in-class training, but instead should be seen as a supplement that provides a means for individuals to practice the skills they have learned through in-class training in a safe environment that offers constructive feedback. Traditional instructor-led or on-the-job training would continue as the classroom component of learning. The proposed software would be, in a sense, extended homework that would allow the learner to reflect on what they learned and experiment with their skills.
This thesis and the proposed software suggest changes to training programs based on what is known about how the brain learns as well as the physical and mental effects of stress on the individual. As the theories behind the suggested simulation software are general and not specific to one type of proprietary program, this solution can be adapted for both large and small businesses through software designed in-house by a company’s training department or through a program template created as a general application by third-party developers and then altered to fit the needs of companies wishing to purchase it.
Definition of Terms
10,000-hour rule: The approximate amount of rehearsal time it takes to learn a skill at mastery level, as proposed by the work of K. Anders Ericsson (1993) and others.
Deliberate practice. Practice of a skill that is done using techniques designed to improve the ability to perform said skill. Techniques can include constructive performance feedback, gradually increased task difficulty, and extended practice time.
Role-playing game. The term role-playing game, or RPG, refers to a game in which the player is required to immersively assume a role in order to complete the game objectives. This role can be based on reality or a completely fictional situation. RPGs also entail specified rules of interaction that may or may not be known by the player initially, but can be inferred over time. RPGs are commonly played as tabletop games, such as Dungeons and Dragons, or computer games, such as the Final Fantasy series, however their role-playing aspect may also be integrated into more non-traditional products, such as training simulations.
Simulation. For the purposes of this thesis, the term simulation describes a digital representation of a situation that can be interacted with in a realistic manner by the user. A simulation program can be used on any device capable of playing computerized games, from computers to cell phones to videogame consoles.
Stress. The body’s physical and psychological reaction to threats, both real and imagined, and situations perceived by the individual as out of their control. Stress triggers are not universal and may differ from person to person.
Talent. The concept of an inborn ability to learn and/or perform a task or skill.
Literature Review
Stress and Job Function
When the body reacts to stress, it responds by releasing stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline to prepare one’s system for the danger it perceives is to be faced, igniting the flight or fight response (Smith, Jaffe-Gill, & Segal, 2007). The body’s reaction to stress initially evolved out of the need for early life to have an automated response to react both quickly and appropriately to potentially life-threatening situations (Medina, 2008a). For early humans, this boost of chemicals allowed for a temporary heightening of senses and physical abilities that allowed them to react to and avoid danger. Medina (2008b) notes that this response was designed to solve short, momentary problems that lasted for seconds. However, modern humans currently live in a world in which their body reacts to significantly longer periods of perceived stress. The stress response initially designed to react to brief bursts of danger may now be active for hours, days, weeks, or even years.
There is evidence that stress can be divided into both good and bad types. Jensen (2008) states that good stress, or eustress, can be defined as a low to moderate stress whereas bad stress, or distress, is characterized by intense and/or prolonged periods of stress. Jensen continues by noting that good stress positively influences both memory storage and retrieval, however bad stress, he states, has distinctly negative side effects. The brain reacts in a number of harmful ways as a response to bad stress, including a decreased ability to interpret environmental signals, a reduced ability to store memories, and an inability to access higher-order thinking skills (Jensen, 2008). Most harmful to job skill performance is the tendency suggested by Jensen by which individuals under stress to revert to “tried and true behaviors,” which in many cases can be the original novice-level skills learned when one first learned to perform a task. Any one of these responses can create a decreased ability to perform tasks, learn new skills, and think critically about situations.
Prolonged exposure to stress means prolonged exposure to stress chemicals. Medina (2008a) comments that long-term exposure to cortisol, for example, is known to disconnect neural networks and prevent new neuron growth. It can even kill existing brain cells. What is most alarming in respect to job function, he continues, is that stress hormones target the region of the brain known as the hippocampus; a region responsible for accessing some types of stored memories, as well as the creation of new memories. The brain has a natural defense against against stress hormones called Brain Deprived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF), however long-term exposure to stress hormones can overwhelm this defense, and even inhibit the production of new BDNF (Medina, 2008a).
Gladwell (2005) notes the negative effects of stress on spilt-second decision making. In Gladwell’s interview with Dave Grossman, Grossman remarks that there is a small window of stress, the level which raises a person’s heart rate to between 115 to 145 beats per minute, in which the experience increases the ability to perform tasks. Beyond that, however, cognitive processing and motor skills degrade considerably. Because of this, Grossman argues that processes that need to be performed under stress be practiced, as without sufficient practice the knowledge needed to perform specific tasks can become inaccessible during stressful periods. Gladwell continues by referencing Gavin de Becker, the owner of a high-profile security firm. De Becker’s firm sends their employees through “stress innoculation” (Gladwell, p. 238), in which staff are put through simulations of possible high-stress encounters that may occur on the job. While the individuals initially respond with the expected drastically increased heart rate, upon constant repetition of the exercise they eventually show a decreased stress response and display a significantly lower heart rate during such activities.
Stress in small amounts can increase both brain and body performance, however in larger and/or more prolonged doses the opposite can occur, leading to poor motor function as well as impaired decision making and learning. Repetition of a task can lead to better performance even under intense periods of stress, but how much repetition is required to reach a mastery level by which the “tried and true” skill that the brain reverts to under stress is, in fact, the desired skill performance, and is this master-level achievement possible for all?
Time Required for Skill Mastery
There has been recent research suggesting that the amount of practice required to become the master of a skill is extensive, but that mastery is attainable by any individual, regardless of perceived talent. Howe, Davidson, and Sloboda (1998) argue that the concept of talent itself is misunderstood, and that achievement is related more substantially to practice time, interest, and encouragement from one’s environment than any inborn skill. In an experiment on the ability to recall digits, Chase and Ericsson (1981) showed that with sufficient practice even a randomly selected individual of average intelligence can achieve the levels of mastery typically associated with talent. In their experiment, the individual studied spent two years and approximately 250 hours of practice in the laboratory learning to recall strings of numbers, increasing his recall ability from seven digits to about eighty over the course of the experiment. There is reasonable evidence that what is perceived as talent may be more closely related to amount and intensity of practice and, as such, may not be a factor in mastery level skill attainment.
Gladwell (2005) relates a similar idea that skill is not inherently inborn but is instead related to the amount of time spent in deliberate practice of said skill. He continues by noting that when comparing the amount of time that recognized masters of varying professions have spent in practice, a repeated theme of approximately 10,000 hours of practice is seen regardless of the particular skill set being attained.
In one example, Gladwell (2005) discusses a study performed by psychologist K. Anders Ericsson on the time spent to become a professional-level musician:
Everyone from all three groups stared playing at roughly the same age, around five years old. In those first few years, everyone practiced roughly the same amount, about two to three hours a week. But when the students were around the age of eight, real differences started to emerge. The students who would end up the best in their class began to practice more than everyone else: six hours a week by age nine, eight hours a week by age twelve, sixteen hours a week by age fourteen, and up and up, until by the age of twenty they were practicing – that is, purposefully and single-mindedly playing their instruments with the intent to get better – well over thirty hours a week. In fact, by the age of twenty, the elite performers had each totaled ten thousand hours of practice. By contrast, the merely good students had totaled eight thousand hours, and the future music teachers had totaled just over four thousand hours. (p. 38)Ericsson (1993) states that the practice towards the 10,000-hour rule should be deliberate practice. He claims that deliberate practice requires time and energy from both the individual, their instructor, and their learning materials; a long period of time devoted to practice; acceptance that deliberate practice is not inherently rewarding in and of itself; and acknowledgement that, due to the effort which is expended in this type of practice, deliberate practice can only be continued for a set amount of time before the individual becomes exhausted. The rewards of deliberate practice in comparison to skills developed through on-the-job practice, however, are exponentially greater. Ericsson notes that while the typical job offers some prospects for skill practice, these opportunities are not as plentiful nor as rich as those within a learning program designed around deliberate practice. He uses the example of a baseball player to illustrate this point:
During a 3-hr baseball game, a batter may get only 5-15 pitches (perhaps one or two relevant to a particular weakness), whereas during optimal practice of the same duration, a batter working with a dedicated pitcher has several hundred batting opportunities, where this weakness can be systematically explored. (Ericsson, 1993, p. 368)Ericsson’s deliberate practice offers a more intensified opportunity for skill acquisition with a focus on the weaknesses of the individual learner than simply learning on the job.
This 10,000-hour rule, according to Levitin (2006), aligns with what science knows about how the brain learns. He states that repetition works to strengthen the original memory of a skill, fact, or concept. Levitin outlines that the brain learns by “the assimilation and consolidation of information in the neural tissue” and that the more one practices, the more neural traces exist for the skill being practiced and the stronger the memory of that skill becomes (p. 197). This supports the idea that there is noted scientific value in substantial practice.
The 10,000-hour rule and the science behind it explains why it is unlikely that minimal practice, such as that experienced during a workshop or short course, can fully prepare a person for a task that requires mastery level performance, such as those that must be performed under high-stress conditions. Gladwell (2008), Ericsson (1993), and Levitin’s (2006) work supports a key point: allowing the opportunity for a significant amount of deliberate practice will lead to individuals who are better able to accomplish the task that they have practiced, in this case high-stress decision-making. That said, when looking to design training that helps learners meet this goal, it is important to consider what forms of training might best work to provide the long-term interest needed to reach the 10,000-hour goal, as well as provide individual guided feedback.
Videogames and Training
While training can take place in a wide variety of forms, recent technology has created new options for educators to consider. Some of these options, in particular those connected to training through video games, take advantage of new thought on the brain’s preferences for engaging learning.
The Proceedings of the Summit on Educational Games (2006) touch on many aspects of using video game technology for training purposes. In particular, this document states that video games are especially adept at teaching higher-order thinking and training learners in decision-making skills. As well, it notes that game-based learning excels in providing individualized hints and personalized feedback to improve performance. The medium’s strengths at teaching critical thinking, customizing content, and providing feedback align well with the requirements of deliberate practice.
Pink (2005) deems play a powerful tool for learning, but feels it is often overlooked and seen by many as counterproductive to both learning and the workplace in general. He notes findings that show videogames have the ability to increase productivity and job satisfaction, as well as contribute to the acquisition of hand-eye coordination, visual perception, “capacity to process information simultaneously,” and problem-solving skills (p. 185). All these skills are key to succeeding in today’s job market. As for specific skill training, Pink cites the success of the simulation America’s Army, a game used by the United States military to create awareness of what service in the military is like and, as a result, increase recruitment.
America’s Army represents but one branch of the computerized simulations utilized by the United States military. Military organizations have used wargame simulations for years, relying on physical board games until more recently (Mitchell, 2004). Mitchell continues, outlining the technical progress of war simulations into the computer age, including the complex simulations used today. Training wargames are not the only place where simulation games are used within the military as many branches have begun using simulation technology for broader topics as well. Macedonia (2001) discusses that gains in technology have led to the military use of simulation games to train strategy and tactics, task simulation (such as piloting a plane), and team building. Jackson (2010) outlines a recent simulation designed to protect United States troops from IED bombings based on data that suggested that troops who had survived one such bombing were significantly more likely to survive subsequent bombings. The program described by Jackson simulates both the physical, visual, and sonic experience of a bombing in hopes that a simulation of a bombing will provide the same survival benefits as the real life experience.
Games like America’s Army and the IED bombing program are just one small example of the impact that games can have on learning. They also represent a branch of gaming that loans itself to the theories of deliberate practice and the 10,000-hour rule: simulations. Aldrich (2009) describes education through simulation games as an immersive style of learning that leads to both a flexible and deep understanding of the material taught. He describes the educational benefits of simulations as such:
As a result, students who learn via simulation can improvise better in the real world. They can handle unpredicted situations. The knowledge is not structured around a list of extrinsic “rules” or processes that can be broken if no one is looking (such as posted speed limits), but developed from intrinsic personal experience (such as if a driver had a few near misses and even accidents with significant consequences). This is knowledge they retain for years or decades. (para. 4)
Simulations are an ideal way to train for skills that must be performed in complex situations. However, Aldrich (2009) also notes that for a simulation to be successful it must also “present richly interactive content models, interfaces and visualizations, and then entice or force students to repeat patterns of actions in increasingly complex and novel situations, and with rigorous short term and increasingly long term feedback” (para. 5). Any simulation, therefore, will not suffice and only those that are immersive and well-planned can hope to achieve the high level of skill transfer possible with the game genre.
One example of a successful simulation game used outside of the military that models complex situations is Incident Commander, a software title from BreakAway Limited and the United States Department of Justice (2009). This program was designed to train public safety managers to deal with incidents ranging from natural disasters to terrorism. The player is put in the role of incident commander, and then asked to coordinate multiple public safety agencies to respond to the incident based on National Incident Management System protocol. This game has been used for simulation training successfully with United States-based public safety personnel and shows a clear example of a simulation used to train learners to work in complex situations.
Within simulations, however, there is the opportunity for learning to become second to enjoyability. Clark and Mayer (2008) relate that in simulation games such as Oregon Trail the intended learning objectives can become hijacked by other elements of the game, such as learner attention to score or sections of the game that are especially appealing to the player but are only loosely, or completely unrelated, to the learning objectives. These distractors take away from the intended purposes of the simulation, often leading to a deficiency in introspection on game play and a lack of mastery of the intended material. In order to avoid this simulation development dilemma, Clark and Mayer indicate that game designers must focus on a balance of enjoyability and a clear focus on the learning objectives of the simulation.
Simulations have the ability to provide an immersive and low-risk environment in which to practice skills. In a correctly designed simulation game, the player has the ability to test their abilities, explore decision-making, and receive guided feedback to their progress.
Current and Past Solutions to Thesis Problem
Employee training in dealing with stressful situations has ranged from non-existent to high technology. In some situations, such as retail, employees must learn these skills on the job in methods ranging from trial and error to observation of coworkers. In other cases, minimal training is provided through company policy manuals, seminars, and team activities. In addition, some organizations have used team-training games, such as those proposed by training manuals such as The Big Book of Customer Service Training Games (Carlaw & Deming, 1998). While games and role-playing can be helpful, short training events cannot provide nearly enough training hours to effectively meet the needs of the Ericsson’s 10,000-hour rule. In addition, these games are generally complicated and require that the activity leaders spend a significant amount of time on preparation for the game delivery as well as on the explanation of the game rules to participants.
The training for higher-level positions has, in some cases, begun adapting to the need for additional practice by utilizing simulation software. Programs such as Incident Commander, while not directly designed to combat the 10,000-hour dilemma, have inadvertently worked towards addressing the need for intense, yet cost-effective, training by creating easily replayable simulations of stressful events in which timely decisions must be made. However, there is a distinct lack of software designed specifically around the 10,000-hour rule for training high-stress situations. Furthermore, the vast majority of complex simulation games have been developed for military applications only, despite evidence that many private and public sector jobs could benefit from this style of skill practice as well.
Proposed Solution to Thesis Problem
There is a noted disconnect from how we know people learn to how businesses and organizations train their employees on new skills. Researchers such as Ericsson (1993) have shown evidence that significant practice time is required for the mastery of new skills. However, many companies spend limited time training and practicing difficult skills that they then expect employees to be able to perform effectively.
It is acknowledged that there are time and cost concerns at work with these decisions. While a company may be aware of the need for increased time for skill practice, the cost of providing such training guided by expert trainers can appear prohibitive. Even practice led by peers (which is less likely to provide as much meaningful performance evaluation as that given by subject matter experts and, as such, would not fully address the need for practice hours to be accompanied by appropriate feedback) would still represent a significant number of hours that employees would be away from their day-to-day job requirements. As well, such guided practice would have to be scheduled at a time convenient for all participants, which would require additional administrative expenditures.
While it is clear that additional opportunities for skill practice are key for an employee to master a task and thus be able to perform it in periods of intense stress, it is also evident that the current solutions for coming closer to the 10,000-hour goal for mastery do not present themselves to many companies as cost-effective. Simply letting employees underperform under stress appears to many to be the cheaper solution. This can lead to lower customer satisfaction, higher employee and customer frustration, and even increased employee illness (Jensen, 2008). What is needed is the ability to have employees individually receive guided skill practice in realistic situations without the costs of trainers or the inconvenience of having to schedule many employees to receive training simultaneously. While seemingly daunting, this problem can effectively be solved by utilizing technology that currently exists in a new manner. The programming behind computerized role-playing games (RPGs) can be turned towards simulating other, real-life based, situations for this purpose.
In a traditional RPG the player is asked to take on a particular role in order to achieve one or more objectives (Aldrich, 2009). The player uses in-game actions and decisions to meet their character’s goals with a set of rules guiding what the results of these actions will be. One of the important aspects of these game rules is that they are consistent. The player must be able to predict what each action will do in a given situation. While an action may not always go exactly according to plan, there must also be a consistency in actions gone awry as well. Actions must only result in an unexpected outcome because the player is missing information about a situation. For instance, a player’s attack on a monster may not affect it because, unbeknownst to the player, the monster is using a shielding spell.
This consistency of rules allows for the player to analyze a situation in which something is not working as they expect it to, acknowledge that there is a deficit in their knowledge or interpretation of the situation, and use experimentation to find the full extent of the rules guiding this situation.
This consistency of rules and acknowledgement of situations by which the player must experiment to fully understand an encounter are also what is needed to provide guided training for real world decision making. A training RPG would allow learners to explore situations, experiment with the solutions learned in prior training, and receive feedback; all within a self-contained virtual world in which mistakes could be made with little consequence. This type of virtual practice, and the design process behind it, is what is proposed as the solution to this training deficit.
To best illustrate this point it can be helpful to see it used in a specific situation. A key example of an industry that could benefit from this type of training solution is retail, in particular training retail workers to work effectively with unhappy and/or angry customers. An angry client can easily raise the stress felt by the retail staff serving him or her significantly. As stress reduces one’s ability to perform non-mastery level skills, this situation requires that staff members have mastery level comprehension of techniques to calm and assist this type of client (Jensen, 2008). A company would naturally be hesitant to have trainees practice their customer problem solving skills on actual customers for fear of alienating those clients with service errors. The proposed RPG-based simulation, however, would allow for guided practice without the potential for mistakes to alienate actual clients.
To create a training simulation for any situation, the first step would be for training designers to evaluate what kinds of situations cause required action by the game user. In the retail example, this step would entail collecting data on commonly reported causes of perceived client aggression, proven customer service techniques for dealing with these situations, and the official company training for dealing with these circumstances. It may also, for the purposes of designing the simulation, be important to research what strategies employees have used unsuccessfully in the past to try and diffuse these situations. This could help create realistic effective and ineffective choices for players to make in the simulation.
After the customer and company analysis is complete, the creation of the simulated world could begin. This is one of the ways in which the proposed training simulation game would differ from a traditional RPG. In most RPGs the intent is to immerse the user in an imagined world for the purpose of entertainment. In this software, however, the purpose would be to create a virtual world that is as similar as possible to the company it is being designed for. The closer the simulation is to reality, the more likely the skills practiced within it have job context and will transfer to the actual workplace (Clark & Mayer, 2008). Ideally the simulation would incorporate as many visual similarities to the real-life store as possible; from store layout to company uniforms to even how many staff members are typically present on-site at any given time. In addition, the pattern of sales and customer flow could be adjusted to better reflect the reality of the company. All these elements would combine to best reflect an accurate depiction of the company as it truly is.
At the same time the actual interaction for the simulation must also be considered. In any training simulation the game needs to effectively represent the actions to be practiced; in this case working to serve angry customers. The player needs to encounter the full range of typical customers, which is where the customer research gathered earlier would be utilized. The data would be used to create a wide variety of customers for the player to attempt to serve. These characters should range from the mildest of cases to the most irate in order to give the player a large range of scenarios, as well as to allow for an increasing difficulty level as the player continued through the simulation.
To create a simulation that can be used for long-term practice it would be important to write programming that can randomly generate characters for the player to interact with. If the simulation only has a set number of customers the interactions will, over the course of time, become repeated. This would cause the game to become repetitive for the player. It would also negate the learning experience as players would be able to eventually memorize the different customer characters, in addition to what actions to take in order to appease that character, rather than having to analyze every customer encounter individually. This could lead to the derailed learning objectives Clark and Mayer (2008) cautioned, as the learners would, in time, rehearse the ability to recall memorized information about a specific character rather than practice the skill of evaluating each customer’s situation and acting accordingly. As even very similar customers have slight differences in what will work best to help them feel heard and helped, randomly generated characters would provide the most benefit to situational analysis skills.
While the customer characters should be randomly generated, they should not act randomly. As previously stated, an RPG functions by creating a world in which the player should eventually, through trial and error as well as scientific method, be able to determine the rules by which the simulated world exists. In this proposed simulation, the player must be able to use the customer service skills learned in previous training to identify how best to help disappointed customers, what techniques and company policies can effectively be used to do this, and how to execute those techniques correctly. While the computer-generated customers should vary in exact situations and actions, there need to be some stable overlying themes and behaviors that can be identified by the player and addressed appropriately. The player is not helped by software that is repetitive, but is also not aided by a simulation that generates characters that function illogically either. What could potentially become the most difficult part of this software may be designing a program that can randomize some traits, yet identify what traits must be separated or paired in order to create logical customers.
In comparison, creating the interaction by which players can solve the problems of the customer characters would be relatively simple. A solution used in the past for training purposes is pre-scripted conversations in which the player is given a choice of several short conversation scripts to choose from to create a response. This type of interaction is known as branching storytelling and has its roots as a training device utilized in early military training manuals (Aldrich, 2004). Aldrich remarks that the original text versions of this type of training were used as multiple choice tests, with each answer directing the individual to a different page. This page would contain either an acknowledgement that the correct answer was chosen or a note stating the answer was incorrect with an explanation of why. While branching storytelling had a decidedly non-technical beginning, the current processing abilities of computers allow for substantially more complex stories and conversations to be created using this medium, including the ability for past actions to greatly change future options for conversation choices. Within the proposed simulation, the dialogue scripts could each trigger a different reaction from the customer and these reactions would in turn lead to a new branch of dialogue options. Each branch would eventually terminate in success or failure, although there could be weighting attached to each termination so that some successes were more desirable than others and some failures had more serious consequences.
Branching conversations could be an effective means of creating meaningful interactions and player choices, however a more complicated option for interaction that is currently used in gaming also exists. In RPGs combat is generally determined by character statistics. Each character, be they player-controlled or computer-generated, has a complex set of statistics that numerically quantifies the amount of life a character has, in addition to other character aspects such as defense, strength, and weaknesses. The specific type of RPG and storyline influences what characteristics are quantified and interacted with, as well as the consequences of actions. Players are given a variety of interaction choices, and these actions have different effects depending on the statistics of the character being acted upon. For a typical RPG these statistics usually relate to the health of the character, ability to withstand attacks, and their own ability to cause damage to other characters.
For the proposed simulation, customer behavior and reaction traits could be tracked using the same system traditional RPGs use to determine the outcome of battles. Characters could have statistics that track their anger and/or frustration levels, in addition to more complex aspects such as sensitivity, patience, clarity, and empathy. The player would have sets of continually available actions to choose from at any given point in the conversation. Their interactions with customers could be calculated against the customer’s randomly generated statistics, with the interactions having positive or negative attributes themselves. A customer could be properly served by finding the right combination of actions by which to reduce their anger to zero, or the player could lose by having the customer reach their maximum anger level. The potential intricacy of traits added to the character statistics could allow for additional complexity of interaction. For example, a customer character could be designed to be more sensitive to apologies and would be more affected by the player saying sorry than other characters. Other characters could be affected by time, and become increasingly angry regardless of interaction choices if the issue was not resolved in a specified amount of time. These character statistics would allow the simulation to more closely resemble the complexity of human interaction.
Regardless of choice, the branching dialogue and character statistics options, or a third hybrid choice, create a means of simulating meaningful interactions using technology that is currently available. With the repetition of these simulated customer interactions the player would be able to practice their ability to calm angry customers. As Gladwell (2008) notes, in order for practice to be beneficial towards meeting the 10,000-hour mastery goal it must include appropriate guidance and feedback. To maintain the simulation, however, this feedback must be given as realistically as possible. For the retail example immediate assistance could be given through an option to ask a co-worker for assistance. The game would then use a computer-generated co-worker to give the player a hint or tip to aid them with the specific customer they are assisting. As staff should be encouraged to become self-sufficient problem solvers, the game would need to make sure this option was not available for every encounter, either though permitting the option to ask for help to only be available in the beginning stages of the simulation or limiting the option to once every several customer encounters.
In this example, further in-game performance feedback could be given at regular intervals in the form of simulated performance reviews with a computer-generated supervisor. In these reviews the program could utilize data collected during game play to grade the player on their overall performance, make note of the player’s successes, and give suggestions for areas of improvement. This feedback would give the player guidance on their current skill level and rate of improvement while not violating the simulated reality of the game. The program could also collect data on skill development and learning deficits, which could then be provided to employee supervisors for performance reviews or to signal the need for more targeted retraining in areas of weakness.
While this example of a customer service simulation has immediate applications within the realm of retail concerns, this is not the extent of training that simulations can provide, nor is it the only situation in which highly stressful activities can be practiced. What is proposed is not one specific simulation game, but a process of designing high-stress training simulations that utilize role-playing themes, complex character interactions created through branching dialogue and/or character statistics, and guided performance feedback, with an end goal of providing the user with a system for long-term practice of one or more complex skills. This design process could potentially be used to create any number of effective training programs, from a simulation of a call center that provides technical support to a game that helps police officers practice settling heated domestic disputes. This design process has been created to be cognizant of the effects of stress on performance, the need for at least 10,000 hours of practice for the mastery of a skill, and the desire for cost-effective training solutions.
Integration of Proposed Solution With Past and Current Solutions
The intent of the proposed simulation programs is not to supplant training but to accompany it instead, as the core ideas behind this software have been designed to address an observed deficiency in current training techniques. This software would most effectively be used after any existing training program, as the purpose of the simulation is to allow the necessary guided practice time needed for skill mastery.
Previously established methods of training these skills, such as group discussions and peer role-play, could still be used in initial training lessons, however the emphasis on the importance of these activities could be lessened as the learners would have ample opportunity to practice their skills at a later time with the simulation software. Companies could also choose to replace these activities with an in-class demonstration and tutorial on the simulation, or remove in-class practice from their training programs completely.
Conclusions
The training of job-related tasks, in particular those that are to be performed under stress, runs contrary to what is know by educators and scientists about how people learn. Stress is detrimental to one’s ability to make complicated decisions and only with mastery level expertise can an individual consistently overcome the effects of stress to continue to make the decisions their training has prepared them for. The time required to achieve this mastery level performance of a skill has recently been suggested to be an extensive 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.
The costs and man-hours required for such practice have made providing the rehearsal needed for the development of expert level skills cost-prohibitive for all but a few roles in the workforce. However, these factors could be greatly reduced by the use of carefully designed simulation software. This software could digitally create a simulation of high-stress situations without the need for waiting for such events to naturally provide themselves or the creation of peer role-playing events. Learners could use simulations designed for their specific work environment, receive personalized guided feedback, and practice skills without needing to enlist the assistance of peers and/or supervisors. Companies could also benefit from the use of carefully developed simulation software, as these programs could provide sufficient time for structured practice with guided feedback at a significantly lower comparative cost. This software could also provide the added benefit of maintaining records on employee results and areas their initial training may not yet be effectively addressing.
Suggestions for Further Research
While it has been noted by Clark and Mayer (2008) that there is not a complete transfer of skills from a simulation to the real world application of a skill, it would be important to quantify how much of a degradation of knowledge this specific type of simulation game has when the skills are applied on the job. This set of statistics would be important in determining what situations simulated practice might not be appropriate for, or situations in which simulated practice would need to be combined with real world rehearsal in order to achieve the necessary level of skill mastery. In addition, it may also be important to study the effects of digitizing the entire training process by combining online or computerized training with simulated practice so as to determine if the initial means of training changes the effectiveness of the simulated rehearsal of the taught skills.
Further study could also provide insight on the best means of providing in-game motivation for the proposed training. There are a number of ways to provide feedback-related motivation to both continue with a game as well as perform according to the game ideals. Within the simulation these means include a numerical game score, individual performance achievements to obtain, character levels, increased game difficulty, and new challenges opened with increased game performance and/or progression. Outside motivations could include contractual requirements for employees to spend a specified amount of time within the simulation and/or achieve a specific level of in-game skills, tangible rewards for in-game performance such as prizes or monetary bonuses, and in-game performance reflected within an employee’s performance evaluations. Additional research would be needed to determine which motivation techniques would lead to further skill mastery and performance, which were ineffective, and which may provide detrimental effects on performance, either initially or over the long-term use of the simulation.
Finally, many of the skill-related events that could benefit from the use of a simulation have rare circumstances in which there are no actions that the individual can take that will prevent a loss situation to take place. For example, in the customer service situation described previously some might feel that occasionally there is a customer in which nothing that the employee can do will make the customer feel satisfied at the end of the encounter. As the proposed simulation software is designed for preparing the user to deal with high-stress situations, it would be helpful to research whether including an occasional interaction in which nothing the user does can allow them to successfully resolve the conflict would be helpful in preparing them for the stress of those rare but inevitable situations, or if the stress from a no win situation in-game would provide a detrimental effect on the player’s motivation that would negate the benefit of practicing dealing with these circumstances.
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