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The SWOS Department Head Transition

The Navy surface warfare Department Head is the officer in charge of a shipboard “department”— operations, engineering, or combat systems. In order to improve Department Head proficiency, the Navy Surface Warfare Officers School (SWOS) plans to transform Department Head preparation to make it more responsive to the training needs of the individual. Modifying some instructional modules to enable self-pacing will allow the Navy to take advantage of students' experience base to capture time that would have been spent in unnecessary training. This captured time will be repurposed to provide students with additional practice in tactical skill development through modeling and simulation.

To execute this plan, SWOS must develop a reliable, valid, and integrated system of assessments that includes initial assessments for placement purposes, formative assessments for development purposes, and exit assessments for certification of proficiency purposes. As a first step toward this goal, SWOS funded CRESST to transition assessment models and tools created on the Office of Naval Research (ONR) project Human Performance Knowledge, Models, and Tools to develop a prototype assessment system for placement focused on two content areas of the Department Head curriculum: Air Defense and Link Architectures. CRESST and its subcontractor, the University of Southern California Center for Cognitive Technology (USC/CCT), have developed an initial prototype of the system to illustrate the concept and its potential. The prototype includes a background survey and air defense and link architecture assessments, as well as a link architecture practice simulation allowing students to practice link architecture planning under various scenarios and a scoring and reporting tool that summarizes student performance.

The Air Defense assessments are:

• Air Defense Threat Emitters Survey—a selected-response test of knowledge of the threat level of different radar emitters.
  
  
• Air Defense Planning—a simulation-based assessment in which Sailors place assets in sectors and assign roles in problems characterized by different geography and threat situations.
  
  
  
  The Air Defense Simulation
  
  

The Link Architecture assessments are:

• Link 11/Link 16 Capability Survey—a selected-response test of knowledge of Link 11 and Link 16 capabilities.
  
  
• Link Architecture Planning—a simulation-based assessment requiring Sailors to indicate appropriate Link connections for given assets, and to assign appropriate architecture roles to assets.
  
  
  
  Link Architecture Simulation
  
  

A Scorer and Report Generator was also developed to allow the instructor to score and analyze performance Air Defense and Link Architecture assessments. It uses an underlying Bayesian network as a probabilistic engine to infer student knowledge of the two areas.


For additional information on this research, please contact Bill Bewley at CRESST, email: bewley@cse.ucla.edu, tel.: (310) 825-7995, mailing address: UCLA GSE&IS, BOX 957150, 1400F PVUB, Los Angeles, CA 90095-7150.