The challenging new environment in which United States Forces are required to operate, characterized by uncertainty, unpredictability and asymmetric threats, demands a shift from deliberate to adaptive war planning. The introduction of Game-based learning technologies in mission planning and rehearsal exercises will create the highly dynamic environment necessary to effectively prepare individuals, units, and staffs for these formidable challenges.

Immersive Learning Environments (ILES) is an online persistent exercise framework that incorporates individual and collective tasks across a complete training event life cycle from Mission Planning to After Action Review (AAR). The ILES framework traverses individual, small-team, and enterprise levels of education, training, and mission rehearsal activity. ILES uses a unique concept called an Event Sequence to assemble time-based activities with abstractions called Nodes, which can be assembled in a serial or complex manner. Decision and Inject Nodes are used to provide a highly dynamic environment that supports branches and sequels. Activity and Group Activity Nodes have a standards-based plug-in architecture for attaching training content, multi-player games, or simulations.

This paper will discuss a notional mission rehearsal exercise with four activity Nodes assembled in sequence with a simulation, content, or a multi-player game attached to each Node. The Mission Plan Node is used for planning the mission. Once the mission plan is completed by the Commander, the plan data is passed to a "collective" Mission Overview Node where players review the plan and selected resources. Then, this data is passed to the next multi-player game for mission rehearsal. Once the mission objectives are achieved, post-game data (such as the individual or collective assessment data) is transferred to the AAR Node for after action review. Using this approach, different mission plans with different mission conditions can be exercised and reviewed.

For passing data between games, we propose a technique where the game includes an associated XML (Extensible Markup Language) schema for post-game data. The framework passes the XML post-game data to the next Node using its inter-Node communication scheme. This approach can be extended for use across games regardless of the game developer or the game engine.