2003 IMTA Proceedings - International Military Testing Association

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antecedent of effective team performance, and communication becomes more difficult when
teams are dispersed.
Indeed, previous research has suggested that the most important aspects of collaboration
may be these intertwined issues of communication and shared mental models of the combat
situation (Schrage, 1990). Collaboration helps create shared meaning about a situation, and this
shared meaning is important for effective decision-making performance. At the same time,
some prior shared situational awareness is essential for effective communication, and
communication is crucial in maintaining and refining that shared awareness. We designed our
research program with these complexities in mind.
We selected the game SCUDHunt for our research on collaboration precisely because it
provides a simplified model of this interplay of shared awareness and communication, while
permitting independent manipulation of variables thought to affect them. SCUDHunt requires
participants to (1) collaborate from distributed locations and (2) share unique information from
their intelligence assets for optimal game performance. The goal of the game is simple, to locate
three SCUD missile launchers on a map. To accomplish this, separated but communicating
players use a computer mouse to deploy information gathering "assets" across the map they share
on their computer screens. Players get five "turns" during which they can gather and accumulate
that information regarding launcher locations. The game thus requires players to execute digital
tasks in order to achieve a shared goal, while performing their different tasks in geographically
separate locations.
Our research began with a cognitive task analysis of this game to identify critical points
where collaboration would be beneficial.* These are points where players need to communicate
planning strategies and to share gathered information in order to perform effectively. The general
collaboration areas identified were:
Coordinating deploying: This is the discussion among players of where best to place their
assets on the map grid, with the goals of (1) maximizing coverage of the area remaining to
be searched, and (2) using certain assets to verify the results of earlier searches;
Interpreting results: This is the discussion among players of the reliability of reports from
different intelligence-gathering assets, leading to a determination of the likelihood that a
SCUD launcher is at any particular location. This involves interpretation of results from the
current turn, as well as integration of findings from previous searches.
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* Ross, K.G. (September, 2003). Perspectives on Studying Collaboration in Distributed
Networks, Contractor Report prepared for the U. S. Army Research Institute for the
Behavioral and Social Sciences by Klein Associates Inc., Fairborn, Ohio, under
Contract PO DASW01-02-P-0526.
45 th Annual Conference of the International Military Testing Association
Pensacola, Florida, 3-6 November 2003