Serious gaming for complex decision making: training approaches

At the heart of tactical decision making and strategic decision making is 'situation assessment', the most 'intuitive' aspect of complex decision making. In training, it is also the most neglected. Particularly for developing situation assessment skills and the cognitive flexibility to apply those skills to situations previously un-encountered, substantial experience in essentially different settings is indispensable. Also, gaining competency in decision making requires tactically valid feedback. Both requirements makes serious gaming an attractive alternative to live training as it allows a to train more - by a far more short-cyclic approach; b to train less - by providing dedicated training by isolating competencies that need intensive training; c to train differently; by dedicated game-based training approaches. In this paper, we describe competencies in complex decision making, requirements for training and subsequently three training approaches that have been field-tested each in at least two domains.

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