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Effective recruitment and retention strategies of teachers remain elusive for school districts. This study examines the pilot implementation of a year-long teacher residency program throughout four high-needs districts. This program embeds eight residents in these schools and provides various teacher preparation supports to support these beginning professionals to sustain within the classroom. We interview district administrators about their recruitment and retention efforts, and then document how the teacher residents experienced these structures throughout their residency year. Findings have implications for improving this innovative and increasingly implemented teacher pipeline structure towards raising the quality and diversifying the workforce.

We describe performance models and meta-analytic data in a period before and after an unexpected workload transition typical, for example, of a catastrophic automation failure, experienced by a fatigued operator. We first present meta-analytic findings on the effects of sleep restriction and sleep inertia on the complex cognitive performance that might typify such a “failure response”. We then present a workload overload task management model whose parameters are based on meta-analyses, relevant to predicting multi-task performance in the post-transition phase performance (independent of sleep disruption effects). We cite the lack of research intersecting these two areas.

Do training methods differentially impact task performance? This paper discusses a set of meta-analytic studies being conducted as part of an ongoing research project to identify evidence-based guidelines for training the complex cognitive skills involved in technology related task domains. Given an emphasis on complex cognitive tasks and training transfer, our current focus is on training methods for effectively managing learner effort and workload during training. In this paper we identify six prominent training methods and present a deeper look at the results for two different meta-analysis strategies. Small to moderate overall beneficial effects were found for three of the six training strategies (adaptive training, error prevention (training wheels) and scaffolding). No benefit was found for learner control and exploratory learning. An overall cost for part task training was associated with its failure to train a time sharing skill. The modest benefit for error prevention was amplified for cognitive skills.

Two novel versions of a meta analysis were employed to assess the conditions of ongoing vehicle control task simulations in which (1) auditory presentation of an interrupting task were beneficial over visual presentations and (2) redundant (av) presentation was better than single modality presentation (providing redundancy gain). Altogether 29 studies were identified. The results revealed that the interrupting task benefited from auditory presentation, but the ongoing task (visual vehicle control task) generally did not. Performance of the visual interrupting task was slightly hindered by separation from the ongoing task. The redundancy analysis revealed that the interrupting task benefited from redundancy when it involved spatial localization and alerting and the accuracy of verbal communications; but suffered when speed of the verbal communications response was measured, and when the two visual channels were separated. Implications for multi-modal presentation of information on vehicle workstations are discussed.

The purpose was to understand the effects of loss aversion and framing on situation awareness (SA) and decision making for a dynamic missile simulation task. Whereas framing has been shown in numerous experiments that were based on the original paradigm, we hypothesized that the loss aversion effects were more general and would extend to conditions in which sure gains were not possible and would affect SA as well as decision making. Forty-eight students participated in a dynamic simulation in which operators had to decide which cities to defend and to answer SA probes while viewing 2-min scenarios wherein probabilities were assigned to a number of target cities as the missile attack unfolded. The authors varied frame in terms of lives lost or survived for a chosen allocation scheme and varied presentation mode in terms of either expected value or individual risk indices (probabilities and lives) as part of the graphic displays. There were significant effects on missile conservation decisions, coverage of small cities, and SA. The results supported theories positing more general effects of loss aversion related to negative affect. Guidelines related to presenting gain or loss information via graphic displays were suggested.

The effectiveness of complex, dynamic, and stochastic decisions require an understanding of the tradeoffs between decisions and the facility to perform what ifanalyses of alternatives. Set in the context of future combat systems, the current study explored features of a robotic asset allocation decision for a surveillance and reconnaissance task. Decision features explored included the method of interaction with plan data, possible decision bias, and robustness following a change in planning assumptions. Findings suggest that planning decisions made from a predetermined set of optimal plans may be faster and more effective than creating plans from scratch if the planning assumptions remain constant. However, plans created from scratch may more deeply engage the planner in the planning conditions, and consequently, result in plans that more effectively handle changes in the planning assumptions.

We analyzed the extent to which a high false alert rate of the conflict alerting (CA) system in five ATC facilities was the cause of a “cry-wolf” effect, whereby true alerts of a pending loss of separation were associated with either controller failure to respond, or a delayed response. Radar track data surrounding 497 CA's were examined and from these we extracted information as to whether the alert was true or false, whether a trajectory change was (response) or was not (non-response) evident, whether a loss of separation occurred, and the controller response time to the CA. Results revealed an overall 47% false alert rate, but that increases in this rate across facilities was not associated with more non-responses or delayed responses to true alerts, or loss-of-separation. Cry-wolf appeared to be absent. Instead, desirable anticipatory behavior indicated that controllers often responded prior to the conflict alerts.

The impacts on performance of three different forms of communication (radio, chat, and tactile belt) were explored in the context of a small unmanned ground vehicle (SUGV) target identification task. The target identification task required a Commander with knowledge of target locations and access to a digital map displaying the current SUGV position and orientation to direct a Soldier remotely operating the SUGV to the targets using a finite set of eleven commands. The study revealed no evidence for a loss of soldier performance with the tactile belt communications channel. The finding suggests that the tactile use of haptic signals may be feasible, a potentially important finding for situations requiring covert communications.

Resource allocation under risk and uncertainty is a complex problem, specifically when making course of action planning decisions on the battlefield. Previous research in this domain has demonstrated the performance impact of visualization aids, feedback, practice, information frame, and time pressure. However, the focus of prior research has been on how to help operators determine where to optimally place a single asset. The current research addressed the same domain, but with the multi-attribute decision of how to best allocate a suite of robotic assets across the battlefield. We explored the impact of information frame and time pressure on decision performance and situation awareness, but further manipulated whether the information frame of decision criteria were forced to a single consistent frame or allowed to vary according to which term was intuitive, regardless of frame. We found both faster response times and more accurate responses within consistently-framed displays over mixed-frame displays. In addition, response time varied less in the consistently-framed displays than the mixed-frame displays.

Operators must often assess risk and take actions in proportion to that risk. This is not an inherently easy task and based on previous experiments, visualization aids may not be the entire solution to aiding operators. This experiment explored the impact of feedback paradigms on performance in a national missile defense (NMD) task. Participants had extensive practice with one of three types of feedback styles: averaged results after a set of scenarios, constant feedback after every scenario, or constant feedback with forced reflection. This study has three main contributions to decision-making research. 1) Although the trust in automation literature shows that averaged feedback increases understanding of the relative frequency of errors, this NMD task showed that constant feedback is more effective than averaged feedback. 2) Participant performance was still improving after three sessions, suggesting the need for more intense training. 3) NMD provides a concrete domain with viable metrics for investigating the perception of risk and uncertainty.

Risk perception and uncertainty management are important components of military decision making, especially in time-stressed and resource-limited environments. The purpose of this experiment was to understand the interaction of integrality of information, presentation mode, and information frame on situation awareness (SA) and decision-making (missile allocation) in a National Missile Defense (NMD) paradigm. Results of the information frame manipulation (expected gain v. expected loss) support earlier findings that subjects are loss averse. SA Accuracy was higher with graphical displays than alphanumeric displays. The implications for NMD are discussed.