CALMET 2012: Rounding up the simulator session

Ha All,

Long time since you heard from us. Mark has been travelling a lot lately and I have been busy with the training of some (9) of our aviation forecasters with the help of a simulator. But we don’t want our session die a silence death.

Thinking back of the session we had a few things came to my mind:

Until now I have done most of the simulator training on my feeling and the feeling of the colleagues who helped me to realize the training. For me it was great to have to dig into literature to get some background knowledge. I still have to read some of the articles you loaded on to this Moodle and I am looking forward to that.
It was great to hear the stories from you all of what you are doing in your training at home in regard to training with simulators. I am convinced that the preparations (and the ideas behind those preparations) for a simulator session are more important than the technique used to run a simulator session of a role play. I think we have seen some beautiful and very simple (non technical) examples of this here in this forum.
I do think that this type of training on the edge of what you can expect in reality is very important just to be ready in case of extreme events. The only trouble was that the needed tools are not always available to train this. In this forum we have seen different solutions to cope with the technical issue which are not expensive at all. Please go and try them yourself and remember even a pile of paper weather charts and sometimes a simple clock will help.
It seems that Australia is the only one is using a simulator as an assessment tool like they do in the aviation. It looks like we are going that way too….
I really enjoyed reading all your stories regarding simulator training from all different parts of the world. I hope it stimulated also your creativity to go beyond the normal training road and try something new.
I hope this place will stay a community where you will drop you stories, both positive and negative experiences, examples, results, ……. and place where you can leave your questions and hopefully will find answers. In this way I hope you realize you are not alone in this world and you will find help when needed.

To definitely end the session Mark and I want to invite you all to go back in your memories and post your reflections and summary of this simulator session in this forum. Mark, on behalf of EUMETSAT, will provide a small price for the best post.

We very much enjoyed this session and we hope that you enjoyed yourself as well. Thank you very much for all your contributions! And we hope to meet you soon in a next CALMet event or in this forum.

Hartelijke groet,

Heleen

Ps. At the start I mentioned the simulator training we were having for our aviation forecasters the past few days (with special thanks to Rob and Rini!). For all of them (9 from very experience to complete new comers in forecasting office) it was their first time they had to do such a training and I don’t want to spare you from their reactions. One forecaster said: “Such a simulator session is much more effective than sitting passive in a classroom. You think that you don’t make any mistakes, but before the simulator session is over you realize yourself that you have made some procedure errors. It was a very good learning experience!”. For another new forecaster it was the first time he had to go through a warning procedure. He told me that he had learned a lot.

We found out that half an hour adaptation time included orienting at your shift is enough and you should have no longer sessions than 3-3,5 hours. A simulator session is very exhausting and you want to save some energy for the debrief of your session. This debrief moment again showed to be the most important part of the simulator session especially for the more experienced forecasters.

See you soon!

Re: Rounding up the simulator session

by Patrick Parrish - Thursday, 1 November 2012, 6:48 PM

Hi Heleen,

Thanks for an excellent summary to an excellent session. You and Mark set quite a high bar for the rest of us to try to reach in terms of engaging the CALMet audience.

My reflection is not intended to be a prize winner, but it is simply this:

You chose a topic of immediate interest to many participants.
You chose a topic with a lot of depth, both technically and philosophically.
You merely stimulated us with good questions, and then left room for us to provide our input without a lot of control. You stepped in just enough to keep the discussion going.

I am not saying this is the only good way to run a session, but it works, and you demonstrated that. I myself plan to offer much more "content" in my upcoming session. But I hope it will stiimulate just as much discussion. But then again, you set quite a high bar....

Pat

Re: Rounding up the simulator session

by Mark Higgins - Wednesday, 7 November 2012, 9:57 AM

Looking back over the posts I see some threads around how people learn, and how can a simulator help someone learn. I shall try and summaries some of the themes. The original posts will stay in the form and I do recommend taking some time to look back over some of the ideas we have covered.

In a simulator we can learn about an idea or concept, learn a skill, and learn procedures. The skill can include learning to work in a team, make decisions and issue warnings.The idea of fidelity came up and to me it became clear that we can use as little fidelity as we need for the exercise. If we ware working on a particular concept we can strip away complexity to make it easier for our students to learn that concept without having to worry about how a display system works (for example). We add fidelity as it is needed. We can also rely on the imaginative capacity of the students to fill in the gaps between the simulated world and the real office. The role of the simulation is in some way to stimulate the learner's imagination.

Out side of an assessment scenario the simulator is a place where "time out of time" can be found, it is possible to stop the clock and discuss how it is going, get feedback and learn from the moment, if the environment has been created by the instructors a simulator can be a place where mistakes and learning from those mistakes can be welcome.

The word authenticity came up several times, and I think in different ways. I think one of the key dimensions of this was working with the learners as human beings and letting be themselves in the learning experience - giving them space to reflect on what is going on. Forecasting is in some sense a drama and as the drama of the situation is played out (with the forecaster(s) playing a lead role) there is plenty to learn from the meteorology and the human decision making processes at play. We can use the simulation environment to change our models of reality as we find and correct errors in those models / ideas. simulators can be a place for people to play - to try new ways of working that would be to risky or unhelpful in the real world.

Simulation can/is be used as an assessment tool, those using simulation in assessment require the forecaster to be able to explain why they made a particular decision - to be able to show their thinking.

Simulations can take a while to set up - to find the data put it together, get the people together and get skilled instructors to run the simulator - all take time; my sense is that it is very worth while.

Thank you all for your contributions - I have found this session really helpful for my work.

We have probably reached the point where this session is closed. However, I will stay subscribed to this forum - if I come across a useful simulator example or paper I will post it here feel free to do the same!

Warm wishes

Mark