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 The F-16 Maintenance Skills Tutor How do you keep technicians trained to repair systems that are highly reliable? The Air Force has this problem in training people to maintain its fleet of F-16 aircraft. These skills are normally taught through on-the-job training. This method consumes time and manpower, requiring years of apprenticeship training under experienced maintenance technicians. With the downsizing of the Air Force, there are fewer technicians per aircraft and many of the experienced technicians are retiring leaving fewer people to train novices. In response to this need, research was performed in two areas: cognitive task analysis techniques to capture troubleshooting strategies used by experts and novices, and intelligent tutoring systems that take the results of the cognitive task analysis to provide a practice environment for working authentic troubleshooting problems while coaching the student with hints and feedback. The result of this research is the F-16 Maintenance Skills Tutor. Using this type of tutor for 20 hours is equivalent to 3.5 to 4 years of experience on the flight line. This tutor teaches technicians troubleshooting skills on F-16 communications systems. This tutor is currently being used at Air National Guard wings and will be used as part of an advanced troubleshooting class for the Air Force. Building the F-16 Maintenance Skills Tutor required a time and labor intensive cognitive task analysis to develop the data required to build the system. The cognitive task analysis was conducted by a team of psychologists, researchers and subject-matter experts. The task analysis began with a data collection activity. First, troubleshooting problems for the tutor were developed by team members interviewing F-16 technicians who work on the flight line. Expert strategies were determined in a second round of interviews by presenting technicians with the problems generated from the initial interviews. The final stage of the cognitive task analysis was the data analysis. The data analysis involved taking all the information obtained from the data collection and turning it into reports that defined how the tutor would operate. Once the data analysis was complete, the intelligent tutoring system was built. An intelligent tutoring system is a form of computer-based training that uses artificial intelligence to tailor the training to meet a specific student's needs. Intelligent tutoring systems have been an area of research since the late 1970s, but until now they have been essentially laboratory bound. The F-16 Maintenance Skills Tutor combined intelligent tutoring system technology with a simulation of the real world to create a computer based, situated learning of problem-solving skills in a coached-practice environment.
Figure 1. The troubleshooting screen in the F-16 Maintenance
Skills Tutor The F-16 Maintenance Skills Tutor simulates the experience of on-the-job training including running tests, moving switches, replacing components, taking measurements, and asking an expert for help. This is done by giving the student realistic guided simulations of real-life problem situations using software models and high resolution graphics backed by an expert system that knows how to troubleshoot. This gives the student an experience that is progressive (easier problems are given to the student first). It provides explanations and help (when requested by the student), and it gives the student practice in the mechanics of expert problem solving. The F-16 Maintenance Skills Tutor makes the student responsible for learning. The student must ask the tutor for expert coaching, which is in the form of hints, reminders, and explanations that are adapted to the specific scenario. General coaching information is given to a student before specific coaching. The only case where a student is given unsolicited, specific coaching on an action is when the student performs a safety violation. As students learn, they will rely less on the coaching as they become master problem solvers. The F-16 Maintenance Skills Tutor gives feedback to foster learning skills.
A reflective follow-up provides the student an opportunity to review his/her
previous solution and receive feedback on specific performance criteria.
This allows the student to better monitor and improve his/her performance.
The reflective follow-up also presents an expert solution for comparison
with the student's solution.
Figure 2. The reflective follow-up screen in the F-16
Maintenance Skills Tutor How do the students like the tutor? The only complaint is that troubleshooting with the tutor is just as difficult as the real F-16. The F-16 Maintenance Skills Tutor effort has provided a process to perform cognitive task analysis and an architecture for building these tutors in the future. Based on the lessons learned from this effort, future intelligent tutor efforts should produce higher quality tutors faster and at a lower cost. MITRE helped develop the F-16 Maintenance Skills Tutor by assisting in the development of the acquisition strategy, cognitive task analysis, systems engineering, and testing for the F-16 Maintenance Skills Tutor. For more information, please contact Christopher Marsh using the employee directory. |
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