Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder have been awarded a $5 million grant over five years to help optimize the training of American soldiers.
The project's goal is to create a computer model that will be able to tell the military how effective different training methods will be on numerous tasks ranging from language translation to tank gunnery.
CU-Boulder psychology professors Alice Healy and Lyle Bourne are the principal investigators for the grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Defense Army Research Office under its Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative.
A great amount of time and money is spent training today's soldiers, Healy said. The new model is hoped to lead to improvements in training effectiveness outside of the military as well, including the business world and education.
In general, a training process is evaluated in three ways: the speed of the training, its durability and how easily it can be transferred to other tasks. In the military, much of the training is done by what instructors intuitively believe is the best way, according to Healy.
"We've been investigating various training methods in the lab for the last 20 years," she said. "In this project we want to create a model that will let the military get closer to being able to predict which training methods will be successful for different tasks.
"How much time should it take to do the training? How well remembered is the training? Should they take more time for training on certain tasks? How should the training of different tasks be scheduled?"
Bourne said it is quite unusual for the Army Research Office to spend research money on behavioral science, with the CU grant being the only one out of the 26 given under the Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative this year. He said the military gives most of its basic research grants to engineers and the hard sciences to develop better military hardware and new technologies.
"At this point, the Army puts most of its money into technology and very little into understanding the behavior of the people who are using the technology," Bourne said. "But in reality, every soldier undergoes a tremendous amount of training, and we need to understand its effectiveness."
The project also will offer research experience for students, Healy said. They plan to hire four graduate students and two undergraduates to help on the project.
Co-investigators on the project are Bengt Fornberg of CU-Boulder, Benjamin Clegg and Eric Heggestad of Colorado State University, Robert Proctor of Purdue University, Cleotilde Gonzalez of Carnegie Mellon University and Ronald Laughery of both CU-Boulder and Micro Analysis and Design in Boulder.