Scenario authoring by domain trainers

Authoring is a bottleneck in the widespread uptake of technology for training and education as the time and skill needed for domain experts such as trainers and teachers to develop learning modules is prohibitive. In this project the authors are particularly concerned with providing experiential knowledge transfer, where the trainer is able to create scenarios similar to those they have experienced and allow their trainees to consider appropriate responses to such situations. For this the authors need an environment which is immersive for both parties, in which knowledge is acquired, transferred and gained in the context of the scenario. The scenario itself becomes part of the knowledge to be experienced. To this end they have created a simple approach involving synthetic agents within a Virtual Environment who can be changed along with their dialog and behaviour to create and modify scenarios as deemed appropriate by the domain expert in order to improve the learning experiences of the trainee.