Design and development of PC-IMAT: Teaching strategies for acoustical oceanography

PC-IMAT (Interactive Multisensor Analysis Training) was developed in 1994 by NPRDC as a set of software tools to satisfy the initial need — to enhance the training of aviation ASW operators. While Navy training opportunities have decreased (reductions in deployments, encounters, and shore-based training facilities), training requirements have increased. The PC-IMAT project is proving to be a flexible and effectively evolving computer based training/educational platform needed to help tackle ASW and other tasks which require extensive analysis, classification, and interpretational skills. Students taking SP411 (Underwater Acoustics and Sonar) are currently using PC-IMAT to help investigate what are the effective instructional strategies which convey understanding of a complex multivariate domain (like ray trace or propagation loss models). Recent research on ‘‘scientific visualization’’ (to enhance comprehension and retention) and modeling from student feedback will be used to help develop and evaluate existing training materials. Questions arise naturally. What are the issues of the educational platforms to successful learning? What is the best computer utilization so that there is efficient evolution in the distributed training, whose contents have been reviewed, overhauled, and accepted by experts in the field? Finally, shipboard training is limited by the senior person’s knowledge.