Hi guys,
A very interesting topic indeed. When I'm at work, I'm involved in training with NavCanada. In fact, I'm also doing some post-grad research into simulation at present. What is surprising is to see how little of the research on flight simulation has been mirrored in an ATC context.
Clearly, simulation presents something of a conundrum for ATC trainers. Until now, we have striven for high-fidelity simulation which replicates the operation as closely as possible. However, this is hellishly expensive to maintain, and is subject to every slight change in procedures (or interpretation!). Add to this our own cumbersome methods for scenario creation (in my workplace anyway), and we are at the mercy of a spectacular but unwieldy beast.
Anyway, studies in simulation appear to indicate a change. In short, we may move towards an increase in low-fidelity sim - even something as basic as classroom scenarios - in an effort to reduce time spent in full simulation. Research seems to support such a move: high levels of physical realism in simulation do not guarantee effective transfer of training, and in some cases are even an obstacle to it (too much extraneous information). On the other hand, limited physical realism can still provide students with optimal
psychological fidelity - an accurate recreation of what it feels like to perform the task or tasks. There are also studies which highlight the effectiveness of low-fidelity in part-task simulation;this includes "reverse-chaining" of objectives, where the trainee starts close to an end-point and adds tasks in front of the objective until an entire operation (e.g. a landing sequence) is mastered. There seems to be a clear case for exploring low-fi simulation further.
In any case, much of the research has been conducted in flight simulation. There are clear parallels with ATC, and these still contain considerable room for investigation. From my point of view, it looks like there is a need for further use of low-fi and part-task simulation as a precursor to combining performance tasks in more realistic scenarios. I'm certainly a proponent of simulation in ATC training, but I believe there is plenty of room for refinement.
Any comments or findings would be welcome (supported by appropriate empirical evidence of course!
). I would be very interested to hear from anyone else who might have conducted research in this field.
Cheers,
Pig
