Navy aviation maintenance intelligent free-play troubleshooting simulations: capturing the aviation maintenance decision process

This paper is divided into three parts. The first part is a description of the decisions a technician needs to make in order to become an expert maintenance troubleshooter. The second part discusses some of the pedagogical and technical issues a developer must address when working with subject matter experts. The third part discusses future trends in the instructional simulation field. Two areas are covered. The first is the trend to use intelligent simulation-based tutors to train complex decision-making skills. The second is the practical challenge of migrating these sophisticated media-rich tutors to the Web. Both technical and pedagogical issues are covered as each applies to the unique domain of aviation maintenance troubleshooting.