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Human-systems interaction for virtual environment team training

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Abstract

Virtual environments are increasingly used to support collaborative activities and distance learning. However, few are designed to support students, instructors and simulations in multi-participant team training. This paper describes the Training Studio, a system for authoring, delivering and evaluating multi-participant team training in an immersed virtual environment. The Training Studio focuses on human-systems interaction, allowing multiple students to learn and perform team tasks. The Training Studio supports collaborative learning for either single or multi-participant activity. This is accomplished through the use of agents which are assigned to students to act as personal mentors or missing team members. Conducting team training within a virtual environment introduces complexities and issues unique to team training and multiple-participant virtual environments. This paper describes our approach to virtual environment team training, discussing issues confronted and resulting design considerations and implementations.

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Correspondence to L. McCarthy.

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McCarthy, L., Stiles, R., Johnson, W.L. et al. Human-systems interaction for virtual environment team training. Virtual Reality 4, 38–48 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01434993

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