Making the Game

SWOS Virtual Reality Training

Delivery Highlights

Readiness Control Officer (RCO)

Engineering Watch Team Training (EWTT)

Combat Systems (CS)

EPT Surface Training Immersive Gaming and Simulations (STIGS)

Role: Instructional Designer, Quality of Instruction (QI)

This course focuses on the RCO, a critical watch station onboard LCS ships responsible for the safe operation and maintenance of the ship's machinery and propulsion systems.

I entered this project as the sole member of the QI team, tasked with reviewing Instructional Designer-developed content. Initially without organizational style guides or standards, this consisted of a simple grammar and spelling check. After getting a sense for the lesson creation already in progress, I developed the first organizational Style Guide for use by the team, intended to increase consistency amongst developers. In addition, I performed QI reviews of each lesson after it had been created, ensuring that standards were applied appropriately, while editing for grammar, stylistic choices, and instructional approach.

Role: Instructional Designer

EWWT is a multi-player LCS environment in which RCO and Engineering Plant Technician (EPT) students collaborate to complete Evolution Sets and Drills, without any guidance, scaffolding, or gates.

This delivery was the beginning of big changes to my role, in terms of my contribution to content creation, as well as my foray into pre-production efforts. In terms of lesson design, I not only built prototype lessons for use by the team but also developed the majority of initial lessons when we moved into the production phase.

EWTT was in many ways a precursor to the leadership role I was to take in future projects, due to the unique challenge it presented in terms of development. Typically, lesson grading and student progression are controlled by utilizing ship end-states, which mark completed procedural tasks. Without using SIM states to “gate” progression—well, let’s just say that development had to get pretty creative. Spearheading instructional design, I collaborated with other stakeholders to create a new approach, involving the way the lesson was developed on the backend.

In hindsight, my time on EWTT introduces many examples of personal evolution and growth; namely, my ability to learn, implement, and master multi-functional skills. After the initial phase of production was complete, I shifted into Quality Assurance (QA), testing system functionality and performance to find and fix errors and inefficiencies.

Role: Prototype Developer, QI Manager

I began to prove my value early on in the CS delivery—in pre-production, to be exact. While still technically on the EWTT team, our manager realized the first CS deliverable, lesson design strategies, was running behind schedule. I completed a quality pass on all 234, ensuring they were delivered on time (or, in one case, a day early).

After receiving poor reviews from the customer following the first delivery of developed lessons, I volunteered to return to QI full-time, in an effort to iron out standards, give feedback to my colleagues, and ensure delivery of a clean product. I knew it was much needed—and I was confident I could get all 12 multi-functional teams, and the content they were developing, on the right track.

Because of my tendency to search for ways to improve efficiencies in our process, as well as to question the reasoning behind those currently followed, I quickly became involved in stakeholder discussions regarding decisions related to standards and approach. This enabled me to mentor not only designers, but other cross-functional team members, on best practices and lessons learned.

Soon after, we hired and assembled a four-person QI team, which I led, trained, and managed. The group not only reviewed, edited, and provided feedback for completed lessons, but overhauled our Wiki, documenting process, standards, and best practices, while also ensuring navigation was intuitive and user-friendly. This project is the first substantial contribution made toward yielding significant operational proficiencies. Such comprehensive content management put me at the forefront of authoring, analyzing, and modifying project deliverables and organizational documents, with an aim of identifying opportunities for improvement.

“Chelsea’s efforts had a direct correlation to the improved quality at the end of CS…she volunteered for additional roles, successfully fulfilled the mission for those roles, and improved the quality for the entire Studio in both efforts.” 

-Former Functional Lead

The quality assurance provided by my review of language, content, and overall approach, made for real enhancement of consistency, accuracy, and quality. In the end, I performed a review of 250 of the 310 lessons and was recognized as being responsible for improving quality for the entire Studio—not only in terms of this delivery, but the ones that followed, too.

To this end, I see this project as one of my most significant personal contributions to our work. Proving that I had a firm grasp on the big picture, and made decisions which reflected an understanding of their company-wide implications, I was able to maneuver roadblocks effectively, improve efficiency, enhance quality, and provide the sort of feedback that enables true growth.

Role: Instructional Designer, Prototype Developer

Officially responsible for prototyping all new contracts, I began this project creating prototype lessons and establishing standards related to instructional approach and gamification. In doing so, I simultaneously identified risk factors associated with future development, allowing the team to establish best practices approved by the customer prior to full-swing production.

“Chelsea’s efforts had a direct correlation to the continued high-quality into Deck Ops …she worked to improve the QI process by making standards concise and relevant…[and] identified efficiencies to Deck quality processes…”

-Former Functional Lead

My QI work on CS was recognized as setting us up for success, as it allowed us to begin a project with important standards, guidance, and best practices already in place. By making standards concise and relevant, I improved the QI process and made sense of development decisions for other functional groups. Such efforts result in standards that leverage contractual obligations and customer needs, assisting with optimal performance and transfer of knowledge.

In addition to my work regarding standardization, style guides, and the like, I participated as an Instructional Designer within a production team. Ultimately, I was personally recognized as saving the team time by simultaneously developing my own lessons while also reviewing others’ work.

Role: Senior Instructional Designer, Course Lead

This Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (ID/IQ) contract represents the greatly expanded next phase of the LCS IVSE courseware program and falls under the Surface Training Advanced Virtual Environment (STAVE) program umbrella. This ID/IQ required Cubic to analyze, model, simulate, design, develop, produce, modify, integrate, test, deliver, and support, both United States (U.S.) Navy and Foreign Military Sales (FMS), surface ship physical trainers, simulation products, and courseware for any class of surface ship.

Beginning this delivery as a Senior Instructional Designer, I worked to create the prototype lessons, onboarded a new hire for the QI role, and made myself available to answer questions, discuss existing standards, and identify/solidify new standards as they were encountered.

Over the course of production, I was promoted to Course Lead. This involves collaborating with other stakeholders for staffing plans and project tasking, as well as leading a team of designers in day-to-day operations. Perhaps most importantly, this delivery required regularly exercising discretionary and substantial decision-making authority for the project. In that regard, it involves responding to specific customer issues and finding resolution.

Meetings with the customer involved regular fulfillment of contractual obligations, as well as those addressing issues that arise mid-production. Often, these begin as impromptu occasions to raise concerns and discuss relevant happenings, morph into more defined sessions to find possible solutions, and, ultimately, culminate with agreement and resolution. As such, they truly represented my intent to provide absolute customer focus to meet our commitments—often by coming up with alternate solutions that satisfy both parties. With a strong drive to understand end-user needs, and the ability to speak with the end goal in mind, I strive to put the focus on winning the customer and meeting our commitments.

There was an equal amount of work to do internally, as well—development-related standards and project quality, staffing and hiring, or contractual obligations and deliverables. Team planning and status meetings were massively important opportunities to review incoming customer comments on developed material, as well as to estimate and assign work for the week. It was also a chance to discuss particularly complex issues with other functional stakeholders, decide how best to move forward, and find resolution.          

I was recognized as being responsible for identifying potential issues, gathering input, and presenting alternative solutions, in instances where the need for standardization is recognized. Moreover, I was credited as being key to the program’s start up, as well as the creation of elite teams within the Studio at large. This was accomplished through holding review sessions with new team members, as well as training sessions on several tools that defined their features and use.

Role: Senior Instructional Designer, Course Lead

S2025 consists of two parts: Fiscal Year 2021 (FY21) and FY22 Content Conversions. FY21 is a single-source IDIQ, with a $92.3 million contract ceiling and a four-year ordering period. This includes the design, development and delivery of modernized training content, meant to be used by sailors over the course of their career-long learning continuum. FY22 represents, essentially, a continuation of the training modernization effort, meant to enhance fleet readiness.

Per usual, my efforts related to the development of production standards, as well as ensuring adherence to these standards, played a key role in the quality of our content development. Joining the team mid-production, I immediately recognized that the efforts of various disciplines were at odd with one another. A young and inexperienced team often led to rash decision-making, and no understanding of the manner in which such choices may affect another discipline’s work.

I immediately jumped to action, working with various cross-functional areas to streamline process and procedure within the teams. I also took the initiative to develop production documents for use by various functions, including an outline of the Onscreen Elements of Complex Media, as well as a Complex Media PC SIM checklist—a document which became a crucial component of development used by several disciplines. Not wanting to overlook the impact this may have on other deliveries, I also worked with FY21 to ensure standards and processes developed were cohesive across the board.

My most substantial contribution was tied to identifying potential efficiencies and implementing strategies to use toward that end. Examples such as creating PC SIM development plan task estimates helped to ensure tasking was appropriate, team members were well-informed of expectations, and deliveries were on-time. Other activities also worked to this end, like developing agendas for weekly customer meetings, establishing standards, and working with various cross-functional areas to streamline process and procedure within the teams.

All of these efforts lend themselves toward an ultimate goal of meeting our commitments, and ensuring ultimate delivery of consistent, high-quality lessons.

Data-Driven Results