Expertise Development

This focus area has one primary goal – to accelerate learning and skill acquisition in expeditionary warfighters. To accomplish this, there are investing in methods to decompose complex tasks into critical parts, develop next generation sensors – both passive and active – that can be used to adapt training to the specific needs of an individual trainee, training strategy selection that matches trainee to presentation and pace appropriate to that trainee, and methods of training effectiveness evaluation that can predict the effectiveness of a specific training asset.

The Expertise Development program is unique in that it addresses the full spectrum of expeditionary warfighter training–from early skill development to the refinement of individual skills, to small team training, up to full exercises. All these parts must be integrated with as much customization as possible which leads to accelerated learning.

Contributions to the scientific community include sensor development, real-time EEG understanding, novel task analysis techniques that are linked to training effectiveness evaluations and metrics, and inventories of validated learning strategies that are connected to the learner through personal performance data and history.

There is a strong pull from both the Training and Education Command, as well as Program Manager Training Systems, for these knowledge products and training enhancements. Generalization across task domains and warfighting specialties is key to the success of this program. Increasing the effectiveness of our training assets while driving down the costs to train are the main objectives.