Rapid Prototyping Innovative Virtual Worlds that Include the WOW Factor
(Room S320E)
30 Nov 17
9:30 AM
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10:00 AM
Submarine Learning Center (SLC) and Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) have been implementing virtual world environments to deliver US Navy courses to sailors at SLC learning sites. For these courses, minimal course design changes were made to prepare them for delivery. The courses were based on design principles that modeled traditional Navy Schoolhouse classroom delivery. The traditional training classroom design has proven to be successful in getting these courses transitioned and implemented into the virtual world environment rapidly. However, student feedback has indicated that students want future virtual environments to leverage innovative virtual world capabilities that are not possible in the traditional training classroom. Based on student feedback, SLC and NUWC reviewed the literature on virtual world design solutions, and established a creative team of sailors to design virtual environments that include designs that reward student achievement, maintain engagement, and improve instructor to student interactions. This paper will describe design solutions, the process implemented to train the sailors, and the results of working with innovative designs using rapid-prototyping during the instructional design process. This paper will make two important contributions. First, it will demonstrate how implementing rapid prototyping during the instructional design process when building virtual world environments can lead to the WOW factor by enabling flexibility during the process, leading to improved designs in less time. Second, it will provide a process that others can implement to develop designs for virtual world environments using a team-based approach.