Training is often consumed in the classroom or remotely as a one size fits all structure with limited opportunity and/or costly simulations to practice hands-on skills in contextualized situations. Providing training to sustain a global force in a digital world must be mobile and offer the ability to “act out” or practice critical skills to instill muscle memory, embody actions, and formulate critical thinking. By utilizing an integrated approach of augmented, virtual, and mixed reality technologies, eXtended Reality (XR) training can provide a contextualized virtual environment (which links the learning of foundational skills to practical scenarios and operational stressors) with augmented overlays and real-world objects (to scaffold instruction via multimodal cues tied to the real-world) creating a fully immersive and highly engaging training environment.  When XR training applications are embodied and accessible an opportunity exists to provide psychomotor practice in a highly engaging environment leading to significant proficiency gains in both primary and refresher training. Providing trainees immersive, hands-on XR training anytime, anywhere using applications downloaded to a mobile device enables consumption to be readily available and learner centered offering an action-oriented option very different from traditional classroom and remote training.

It is crucial when developing XR training solutions to evaluate the utility of the novel contextually based design elements and embodied interactions afforded by XR. This challenge is further complicated when implementing XR training using handheld mobile devices. XR does not have a proven, common mental map for the way users expect to interact with XR content on a mobile device especially when spatial movement is required. It is critical to build systems and UI/UX interaction capabilities that optimize users expected interaction paradigm with future facing technology.  

This Emerging and Innovative Concepts tutorial will dive into the key elements of a mobile immersive training platform that leverages andragogically-based activities and formative assessments to infer trainee proficiency by providing insights into: key drivers of immersive, accessible training in XR; potential implementation barriers and technical challenges to embodied training in XR when using mobile devices; value-added case studies with end-user feedback; and user-centered guidelines for designing, developing and implementing mobile XR training systems. By the end of this tutorial, attendees will be able to implement effective techniques for developing and implementing immersive, accessible mobile XR training applications based on case studies in the military medical, transportation, logistics, and maintenance domains.     

Keywords
ADAPTIVE, AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT, ASSESSMENT, AUGMENTED AND VIRTUAL REALITY (AR/VR), BLENDED TRAINING, COMBAT CASUALTY CARE, EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES, HUMAN FACTORS, HUMAN PERFORMANCE, IMMERSIVE, INTERACTIVE, MIXED REALITY, SCENARIOS, TRAINING, VIRTUAL