Developing resilience in team communication skills remotely using VR
Vocavio is delighted to announce that our founder and CEO, Conor McKenna will present findings from a novel training technology development project, TeamDX Loadmaster.
This project idea was conceived during the depths of COVID19 lockdown, that saw many military training centers at reduced capability or shuttered entirely. We sought to answer that need, how can we keep soldiers non-technical (cognitive) skills fresh, while training from home.
Leveraging Oculus VR devices, azure cloud technologies, virtual lobbies, Unity game engine, Vocavio engine (voice analysis) and some old fashioned sketching with pencil and paper at design meetings, we did it. The teammates successful designed, developed, deployed a remotely accessed training tool that put military teams into ambiguous, information heavy environments that pushed them to their cognitive limits. (yes, by level 3 you want out, its quite taxing getting supply drops out of a virtual C130 when there are lots of unknowns and you are against the clock !).
At this talk, Conor will share our journey and importantly answer the question, can you develop (and measure) resilience in team communication skills remotely?
Abstract – Vocavio, together with teammates playerthree and AffectIn, developed and tested a virtual reality game environment that placed teams in a novel environment performing an unfamiliar task requiring actions coordinated through voice communication. Vocavio technology was used to evaluate communication, teamwork and situational awareness through measurement and analysis of speech characteristics and task performance. Derived measures of situational awareness and resilience were shown to increase as number of trials increased. Findings have implications for measuring team effectiveness in high stress performance environments and for developing team resilience.
Extend abstract and presentation available here from the 29th April.
