Simlog's Instructional Design

At Simlog, each Personal Simulator is carefully developed in collaboration with training professionals, leading OEMs, their dealers, and owner/operators to ensure that the right tasks are simulated and that for each one, the simulated work is measured in the right way.

Simulation Modules

At the heart of Simlog's instructional design is the decomposition of the operator's real work into Simulation Modules which introduce the key elements one at a time, from controls familiarization to the complete control of the simulated equipment at work.

For each module, there are hundreds of pre-defined simulation exercises called "trials" that present slightly different situations. In this way, Simlog provides many hours of continuous simulator-based training, right "out of the box"!

Each module presents a new goal that is challenging but attainable, thus reducing frustration while maintaining interest. Since each module builds upon what's learned in the previous modules, people come up to speed more quickly.

Performance Indicators

When each trial ends, the values of key Performance Indicators are displayed, providing a comprehensive evaluation of your simulated work. Just like in the real world, there are Performance Indicators associated with how quickly and how carefully the task was completed, i.e. the simulation software measures productivity and quality.

Practically, results are displayed until "clicked away" to start the next simulation exercise. So at the start, you can take all the time you need to study the value of each Performance Indicator. Later, as your performance improves, just a quick glance might be sufficient, so the results can be clicked away much sooner. In this way, how you take advantage of Simlog's feedback can change as your simulator-based training proceeds.

Since the work at the start is easy to do, trials are completed quickly so there is lots of feedback. Later, when the work is much harder, trials take much longer to complete, and the feedback is much less "immediate". In this way, our instructional design changes both the duration of the simulation exercises and the frequency of the feedback provided, just like a good coach.

Learning by Doing

At Simlog, we believe that "learning by doing" means

letting you make mistakes
presenting the visual (and auditory) consequences of those mistakes
providing feedback to understand what happened

In other words, our simulation software won't prevent you from doing things wrong because making mistakes, and learning from those mistakes, is how simulator-based training best takes place.

Practically, making a "small" mistake such as hitting the sideboard of a (simulated) articulated truck with the bucket of a (simulated) hydraulic excavator, is just counted. But making a "big" mistake such as losing control of a (simulated) off-highway truck on a downgrade, will immediately stop (abort) the simulation and a "fatal error" message will appear. In addition, the fact that the simulation was stopped (aborted) is also noted in the simulation results.

A Flexible Framework

People proceed from one module to the next when performance is satisfactory, but operators looking to refresh or upgrade their skills can instead jump right to the more advanced modules. In all cases, you'll be working to your own simulation benchmarks.

Since the very same trials are presented to everyone and since each everyone's simulated work is evaluated in exactly the same way, it becomes possible to compare the performance of different people in a truly objective way.

Finally, at any time, you can pause the simulation, restart your trial, or quit to end the simulator-based "session", all with just a click of the mouse. In this way, your work is self-paced. What's important is hitting the target, whether you need a little more, or a little less, of simulator-based training.

Questions? Just contact Simlog!