Preface to the Special Issue
Atsushi Asano2011, Acta Alimentaria
Preface to the Special Issue Simulation and training have now become indispensable strategies in many businesses, industries, and lhe mili tary to accomplish their missions and objectives. In fac t, the investment in si mulation technologies and train ing strategies by organizations is over $300 billion a year. In spite of this huge investment, can we calculate its return? Do we know whether our training strategies are working or yieldi ng the desired learning and performance outcomes? Do we routinely conduct trai ning evaluations and, if so, how? Every training textbook or instruction model espouses the importance and necessity of training evaluations. Although those in the field cannot deny their importance and value, such evaluations are more talked about than actually conducted. We all pay lip service to the criticality of training evaluations, but we seldom perform them. Therefore, this subject is the focus of this special issue. The purpose of the special issue is twofold. First, we want to document recent theories, research, methods, and approaches being developed in this area. The articles in this issue arc a representative sample of the research being conducted, pri marily by the military, in trai ning evaluations. A second purpose is to convince those in charge of designing, delivering, implementing, and managing training systems of the value of conducting such evaluations. We hope that scientists and those in practice will sec that additional tools and guideli nes fo r facilitati ng the conduct of training evaluations arc now available and th at such evaluations can be "built in" as a regular component when designi ng training and simulation systems. Further, we hope to encourage scientists to continue to conduct research in this area and to develop tools, methods, principles, and guidelines that practitioners can use and apply. Finally, it is our hope that, with this issue, a new era in military trainingthe systematic and routine conduct of training evaluationswill be launched. We would like to thank Marty Wiskoff fo r his support and encouragement in the completion of this issue. We would also like to express our appreciation to the many reviewers who provided useful comments to the authors of the articles. Finally, we thank those authors for their patience duri ng the long review process. We believe that, in the end, all of the hard work paid off!
