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exercises prior to deployment, Iraqi speaking role players commented that the 3/7
demonstrated Arabic language ability far beyond the skills of typical marine units
preparing for deployment. During their entire tour of duty in Iraq, the 3/7 Marines did
not experience a single combat casualty. The MCCLL interviewed officers in charge
of the unit and conducted surveys of the individual trainees, and found numerous
instances where language and cultural skills contributed directly to mission
effectiveness. Most importantly, it demonstrated an appreciation and willingness to
learn about Iraqi culture, which caused the Iraqis to be more positive and cooperative,
and set in motion a virtuous cycle of cooperation leading to operational effectiveness
leading to mutual trust, leading to further cooperation, etc.
7 Current Work
We are now working to extend our sociocultural models and apply them to new types
of learning environments. An important area of development is in the area of
environments that support multiple learners as well as multiple non-player characters.
When learners reach a sufficient level of communicative proficiency, multi-player
learning environments can become advantageous, as a way to motivate learners and
encourage further practice. We are using the Virtual Role-Player (VRP) architecture
to create multi-player mission rehearsal environments in which teams of trainees work
together on mission rehearsal scenarios. Trainees must interact with non-player
characters representing local people in order to complete their mission successfully.
We plan to extend the VRP framework so that a player can assume control of one of
the local people characters and direct its actions without the learners being aware of it.
This makes it possible to offer the best possible combination of human-human
interaction and human-agent interaction in intercultural skills training. Individuals
with communicative competence in the target language and culture can play roles
within the scenario and artificially intelligent virtual role players can fill in and play
additional roles as needed.
Another learning game under development, the ISLET Game, takes the concept of
multi-player game-based cultural learning even further. The ISLET Game is part of a
larger language learning environment called ISLET (Integrated System for Language
Education and Training), that is exploring methods for making language learning
highly motivating, so that learners will devote their free time to learning a language,
just as they would an entertainment game. The ISLET Game incorporates a
sophisticated reward system, similar to what is found in multi-player entertainment
games such as
World of Warcraft
, that motivates learners to keep practicing and
developing their communication skills. It incorporates engaging multi-player quests
which encourage collaboration between learners. It also supports team conversations
(see Fig. 6), in which learners work together in conversing with a non-player
character and learn from each other in the process.
The CultureCom project is developing formal models of the cultural influences
underlying dialog and utilizing them to increase the flexibility and realism of the
behavior of non-player characters in training simulations. The work is being
conducted in collaboration with Dr. Michael Agar of Ethknoworks and Prof. Jerry
Hobbs of the University of Southern California. Cultural and linguistic
