Scientific and Technical Aerospace Reports Volume 38 July 28, 2000

ing Officer (WEO) and the Deputy Weapon Engineering Officer (DWEO). This report describes this research in which we
focussed upon the innovation of the function-course for the DWEO. Based upon an analysis of the current training practices and
a task analysis, a new concept is developed for the function-course of the DWEO.
Author
Education; Procedures; Training Evaluation; Models
20000065636 Physics and Electronics Lab. TNO, The Hague, Netherlands
Boot: Decision Support for the Selection of Facilities for Education and Training Final Report
vanderHulst, A., Physics and Electronics Lab. TNO, Netherlands; deHoog, R., Physics and Electronics Lab. TNO, Netherlands;
Wielemaker, J., Physics and Electronics Lab. TNO, Netherlands; December 1999; 58p; In English; Original contains color
illustrations
Contract(s)/Grant(s): A98/KM/749; TNO Proj. 27655
Report No.(s): TD99-0240; FEL-99-A188; Copyright; Avail: Issuing Activity
The present report describes a method and accompanying tool (BOOT) providing decision support for the selection of facilities
for education and training. BOOT supports users to define a programme of requirements for future e&t facilities. As fidelity
requirements turned out to be of major importance for the selection of facilities, knowledge based support for the definition of
such requirements is provided. After having defined the programme of requirements, BOOT helps to match this programme
against profiles for possible e&t facilities. Finally, the user is aided to define the relative importance of the various requirements
and to perform a two step multi-criteria analysis. In the first step, an optimum choice on the basis of educational requirements
is determined, in the second step organizational and financial constraints are taken into regard to reach an overall optimum choice.
Author
Education; Knowledge Based Systems
20000067651 NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL USA
Intelligent Tutoring Systems for Procedural Task Training of Remote Payload Operations at NASA
Ong, James, Henke Associates, Inc.; Noneman, Steven, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, USA; [2000]; 1p; In English; Interservice/Industry
Training, Simulation and Education, Nov. 2000, Orlando, FL, USA
Contract(s)/Grant(s): NAS8-98071; No Copyright; Avail: Issuing Activity; Abstract Only
Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) encode and apply the subject matter and teaching expertise of experienced instructors
to provide students with individualized instruction automatically. ITSs complement training simulators by providing automated
instruction when it is not economical or feasible to dedicate an instructor to each student during training simulations. Despite their
proven training effectiveness and favorable operating cost, however, relatively few ITSs are in use. This is largely because it is
usually costly and difficult to encode the task knowledge used by the ITS to evaluate the student’s actions and assess the student’s
performance. Procedural tasks are tasks for which there exist procedures, guidelines, and strategies that determine the correct set
of steps to be taken within each situation. to lower the cost and difficulty of creating tutoring systems for procedural task training,
Stottler Henke Associates, Inc. (SHAI) worked closely with the Operations Training Group at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
to develop the Task Tutor Toolkit (T (exp 3)), a generic tutoring system shell and scenario authoring tool. The Task Tutor Toolkit
employs a case-based reasoning approach where the instructor creates a procedure template that specifies the range of student
actions that are ”correct” within each scenario. Because each procedure template is specific to a single scenario, the system can
employ relatively simple reasoning methods to represent a correct set of actions and assess student performance. This simplicity
enables a non-programmer to specify task knowledge quickly and easily by via graphical user interface, using a ”demonstrate,
generalize, and annotate” paradigm, that recognizes the range of possible valid actions and infers principles understood (or misunderstood)
by the student when those actions are carried out. The Task Tutor Toolkit was also designed to be modular and general,
so that it can be interfaced with a wide range of training simulators and support a variety of training domains. SHAI and NASA
applied the Task Tutor Toolkit to create the Remote Payload Operations Tutor (RPOT). RPOT is a specific tutoring system application
which lets scientists who are new to space mission operations learn to monitor and control their experiments aboard the International
Space Station according to NASA payload regulations, guidelines, and procedures. The RPOT simulator lets students
practice these skills by monitoring the telemetry variable values of a simple, hypothetical experiment, sending commands to the
experiment, coordinating with NASA personnel via voice communication loops, and submitting and retrieving information via
documents and forms. At the end of each scenario, RPOT displays the principles correctly or incorrectly demonstrated by the student,
along with explanations and background information. The effectiveness of RPOT and the Task Tutor Toolkit are currently
under evaluation at NASA.
Author
Education; Payloads; Tasks; Training Simulators; Remote Control; Artificial Intelligence
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