MOPED - A mobile evaluation system to support observers during distributed team training

Distributed team training, often in joint settings, is becoming more and more important in the military training today. As the teams and training staff are not physically on the same location, special attention should be paid to performance measurement and feedback. Important questions are what should be measured during distributed team training, how this should be evaluated during the After Action Review, and in what ways the training staff should be supported in doing this. In this paper we will explore these issues and describe a tool, the Mobile tool for Performance measurement and Evaluation in Distributed training (MOPED), which we have developed specifically for distributed team training. When evaluating team performance in distributed team training it is important to not only address the performance of the local team, but also the performance of the local team in relation to the other teams in the training and vice versa. The mobile evaluation tool is a hand held device that supports the evaluator in observing team performance. The observer can send data to a central database, where the data of all observers of the distributed team are analyzed and then sent back to the local observer, who can now complete the debrief. Some other functional features of the tool are on call checklists based on targeted behaviors and a debrief organization screen that facilitates the observer's preparation of the After Action Review. A preliminary version of the tool was tested at the Royal Netherlands Navy during a small scale pilot. The results were promising and used to improve the tool. MOPED will be tested more thoroughly to identify those aspects of distributed team training that are crucial for the teams and should be addressed during the After Action Review. Special attention will be paid to the support of observers in providing this AAR.