Field Evaluation of the Generalized Maintenance Trainer-Simulator. I. Fleet Communications System

Abstract
The Generalized Maintenance Trainer-Simulator (GMTS) is a concept for giving students in Class C schools intensive practice in troubleshooting equipment and systems taught in those schools. It can be used for any device in which signal paths and their relationships to controls, indicators, and test points can be defined. The GMTS uses generative CAI. That is, it generates the interaction with the student by referring to his last inputs and to its stored history of interactions with him up to that point. To the extent that these individual student histories constitute models of individual students, GMTS constructs a model of each student to interact with that student. In addition of these features, GMTS is uniquely suitable for use in Class C school training. The computer program that implements the instructional system is indifferent to the specific equipment being taught. What specific equipment that is simulated by the FMTS is determined by loading two data bases for that equipment: one describing essential internal features of the equipment and the other describing the external features. This is a report of a field evaluation of the GMTS applied to systems level troubleshooting in the UHF communications side of the Fleet Communications System. Twenty Class A school students waiting to enter C schools practiced solving thirty-five troubleshooting problems. Results were generally positive. The students became uniformly more fluent at troubleshooting; mean times to solve a problem were decreased by a factor of two, and stand deviations of these times were decreased by a factor of five. Also, students' attitudes toward the trainer were generally favorable.

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