Executive Summary

The Lester B. Pearson Canadian International Peacekeeping Centre (PPC) has developed a course to train police officers in international peacekeeping - In the Service of Peace: Police in Modern Peacekeeping (ITSOP). The course includes a classroom component and an interactive exercise component called Exercise Blue Buffalo.

PPC is interested in exploring the feasibility of delivering the exercise component online, in a distributed environment, with trainees and trainers at multiple geographic locations.

PPC contracted with ThoughtLink, Inc. in May 2001 for a proof-of-principle exercise called Blue DICE, in which one vignette from Blue Buffalo would be translated into an online exercise.

From May through September 2001, ThoughtLink:

Designed and developed the Blue DICE web site (http://www.thoughtlink.com/bluebuff). This work included creating a look and feel for the site and translating existing exercise materials into digital formats and writing some new material.
Evaluated various commercial collaboration tools
Integrated collaboration tools into the web site
With PPC’s help, developed a virtual office environment, from which players could access the collaboration tools – see Figure 1
Tested participants’ and role players’ PCs prior to the exercise
Helped PPC develop a list of interactions (or key events) to occur during the exercise
Participated in the conduct of the exercise
Developed a post-game questionnaire for the players.

Figure 1. Blue DICE Virtual Office

The proof-of-principle exercise took place on September 27, 2001. Four participants played from four locations in Nova Scotia and Ontario; PPC role players participated from two Nova Scotia locations. ThoughtLink participated from their Vienna, Virginia location, providing technical support and monitoring the exercise.

The exercise proceeded slowly, due to technical problems caused by firewall issues and NetMeeting (NM) reliability issues. Two of the four participants, who were active police officers playing at their offices, were behind firewalls and were unable to join in NM video teleconferences or text chat sessions with their teammates. The other two participants, playing from their homes, were able to intermittently video teleconference (VTC) with each other and with PPC. They were successful in using text chat and the whiteboard with PPC.

Of the three witness interviews planned for the exercise, one took place using NM text chat and the whiteboard, on which the witness drew a map for the investigators – see Figure 2 below, and two took place on the phone. Exercise materials were passed from PPC to the players using NM file transfer and whiteboard, FileLink!, and traditional FAX.

Figure 2. Farmer’s Map Shared via NetMeeting Whiteboard

Despite the slow pace of the exercise, the participants were engaged in their tasks and held some energetic discussions about how to proceed, even when they knew that the avenues they were discussing were clearly outside the exercise’s scope (e.g., visiting the crime scene). The participants created a memorandum documenting their interviews and proposing the next steps for the investigation. Players looked at reference documents providing background material for the exercise prior to the exercise but not during the exercise.

The exercise demonstrated the feasibility of training peacekeepers in an online environment. Subject to the limitations described above, participants were able to get into the scenario, conduct interviews with role players, interact with each other to develop an investigation plan, and refer to various background documents as needed. When asked if is it productive to conduct training in this way, one player responded: “Yes, by all means. Our brief exposure to the technology provided an insight as to its potential as a training medium.”

We recommend the following approach for future online exercises:

Develop clear training objectives focused on the skills specific to international peacekeeping (vs. policing skills)
Develop scenarios and events that support those tasks
Consider an unfolding scenario that permits self-paced training
Create a broad multimedia representation of scenario items
Make the scenario accessible through an online environment.

At the same time, we recommend further exploration of other VTC options, focusing initially on WebEx. NM is not sufficiently reliable to be a viable alternative, nor does it work behind a firewall – a major obstacle to officers playing from their police station.

Creative use of prepared scenario items, released on the fly to players using an approach similar to computer games, may largely overcome the need for VTC. As an example, vignette 5 might begin with participants viewing a prerecorded video of the station chief briefing them on the allegations of murder and the investigation to date. Participants could then access an online folder of investigation materials: photos or video of the crime scene, prerecorded video interviews of witnesses and suspects, notes from investigators, reports from medical experts, etc. To overcome bandwidth limitations, scenario items could be sent in advance to participants on CD-ROM and could also be accessible from a web site.

Participants would continue the investigation, conducting follow-up interviews with witnesses or experts using the phone or text chat.

Prerecorded videos can provide a face-to-face experience for the participants – they rated this as extremely important in feedback from Blue DICE. In a reasonably high quality video, they can watch the witnesses’ body language and see their facial expressions, all of which they find very important.

Given this foundation, they might be more accepting of subsequent interactions using text chat or the phone. Using these synchronous communication modes considerably simplifies online exercises for both the participants and the controllers. Participants do not need special equipment; no video cameras need to be purchased, sent to participants, installed, and tested. Bandwidth is not a concern for text chat. And finally, Blue DICE participants felt that the VTC was hard to use (perhaps in part because it didn’t work well) while phone and text chat were extremely easy to use, even when participants had no prior experience with chat and minimal training on it.

The Blue Buffalo web site was developed with extensibility in mind. It currently has the basic functionality to support online registration of players, player sign-in, and the execution of online exercises. The virtual room motif can be extended to include other areas of a police station. Currently a virtual room is implemented that represents the station area depicting 4 police officer’s desks. Other virtual room ideas that have been suggested include a briefing room, the station chief’s office, a holding area for conducting interviews, etc. By expanding the virtual room metaphor, participants can navigate to different areas of the site to access scenario-related information and also to come in contact and collaborate with other players or PPC role players.

The combination of the virtual rooms, the multimedia scenario events, and the collaboration with players using the synchronous (text chat, phone) and asynchronous (FileLink!, E-Link!) applications can make a rich, immersive environment where the essentials of conducting policing exercises in peacekeeping operations can be learned and carried onto the operational environment.

ThoughtLink looks forward to continuing our working relationship with PPC and we hope that we can take the Blue DICE concept to the next level of implementation based on the lessons learned from this initial experiment.