Understanding Aspects of Individual and Collaborative Skill Acquisition in Face-to-Face and Distance Training Situations

摘要

Programmatic learning and transfer studies were conducted in co- located and distributed contexts to investigate team-level acquisition of knowledge, use of communication, and establishment and maintenance of trust in complex simulations of military tasks. In these studies, team training occurred in co-located or in distributed contexts, and testing occurred in the same or in an opposite context. Across studies, team performance in distributed contexts was greater than for co-located teams. At initial transfer, all teams showed performance decrements but performance subsequently improved. Results for communication conditions revealed physical context effects at transfer. Results of team-level antecedents to trust, propensity to trust, and trust behaviors indicate that team trust can be built equally well in co-located or in distributed situations if team members are confident in their ability and competence in doing their tasks. Overall, improvements in both training and learning theory are suggested by identifying several variables that affect team performance in context.