Keesler’s MyBase classroom powers up

Published Oct. 26, 2009
By Angela Cutrer
81st Training Wing Public Affairs

KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. -- On Oct. 14, six students assigned to the 338th Training Squadron pulled out their chairs, fired up their laptops and began class -- with no teacher in sight. Later, that instructor may not even be on physical site either.

In an effort to find a cost-effective - as well as technologically edgy - approach to bring education to the military masses, the Air Force's new interactive, avatar-centric, computer-based virtual classroom time has come. MyBase, the core of the new framework, is a virtual education system aimed at the public as well as recruits and career airmen, said a recent military story about the concept.

The plan is for it to be used as a virtual environment for collaboration across institutions as well as for service training.

"The young men and women who will lead our Air Force in the future have been living in a digital world their entire lives and are better prepared than any other generation to operate in this environment," said Gen. William Looney III, AETC commander. "It is imperative that we understand their needs and expectations, and develop an enterprise-wide system that fosters learning and captures their most critical asset -- knowledge."

Last week's class kickoff was the communication and electronics quality assurance course that normally would be conducted on-ground in Jones Hall at Keesler with the instructor front and center. This new delivery mechanism stages the instructor located nearby in another room, communicating with students via the virtual classroom. In the next increment of this prototype, the instructor will be at Keesler, but the students could be located anywhere in the world.

"We are trying to duplicate the in-residence training exactly but in a virtual environment," said Stanley Hall, chief of the 81st Training Support Squadron's training technology flight. "When all is said and done, the students can take that same course (while physically located at) their own base rather than on temporary duty to Keesler."

The 338th TRS and 333rd TRS have worked together to facilitate the upcoming courses, said Col. Lynn Connett, 81st Training Group commander. "The prototype converts two in-residence courses currently taught at Keesler to an advanced distributed learning platform using a 3-D virtual environment where students and instructors interact as avatars."

The 81st TRSS technology support unit initially conducted prerequisite training for Python programming language. Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language that allows programmers to expand and enhance the capabilities of the MyBase education and training environment. Programmers can use the language to adapt the environment -- the classroom -- to whatever virtual reality desired. For example, the classroom can look exactly like any other classroom at Keesler, down to the color of the walls, the window locations and the type of flooring. Or the classroom could feature a futuristic background and ultramodern furniture. With MyBase, anything is possible. It's all up to the decisions of those who control the programming.

Mr. Hall said the programmers employed Qwaq (now called Teleplace) as the basis of the environment. According to Remy Malan, vice president of the company, Teleplace, Inc. is a "secure virtual workspace that combines voice, video and chat communications with multi-application and document sharing, enabling more efficient workflows among distributed teams, suppliers and customers." Through avatars that can go up in rank, airmen will participate in classrooms where they can "manipulate virtual objects and add the sense of touch to the visual cues obtained in virtual environments," the Air Force white paper said.

"The team at Keesler is doing an outstanding job with this project," said Suzy Sutton, the Air Education and Training Command project manager for the MyBase prototype education and training project.

"Without their considerable time and talents, this project would not have been possible. The project is strategically important to AETC because it supports the priority to establish a continuum of learning and develop future learning systems."

Capt. Kelly Just, project lead for MyBase and now director of operations at the 81st TRSS, said that Keesler took on the AETC project and was excited about the new delivery method.

"It's going to be interesting because we have to teach classes as well as 'virtual world' etiquette for guidelines in the classroom," he added. "Though we have digital natives who grew up with gadgets and easily understand all of this technology, we also have digital immigrants who (didn't), so we have to instruct everyone on appropriate behavior in classrooms."

For example, a student can have his avatar move a virtual photograph off the virtual wall in the virtual classroom. Just as this would be inappropriate in an in-residence classroom, so would it be in a virtual one.

Captain Just said that AETC's idea to use a gaming environment took the virtual classroom a step further.

"No one else in the world is doing that," said Captain Just. "Students usually come to class, sit behind a machine connected to an exchange service and work that way. (With this system), we are connecting the students to a virtual machine outside of the virtual environment."

The amount of savings in this type of instruction is "almost immeasurable," Captain Just added. "In the future, it's such an easy way to convert in-residence classes to a virtual-instructor-lead training."

In increment two, students will arrive temporary duty to Keesler and set up in one classroom with instructors operating from a separate classroom in Stennis Hall. The plan for increments three and four is that students will take the courses from their home bases and the instruction will be distributed via the Internet. The 333rd TRS starts the messaging exchange course in early November.

"We are looking for this to be an avenue to save lots of money -- $2,000-2,500 per student," Mr. Hall said. "With 200-300 students per course, that adds up pretty quickly. It's groundbreaking for the Air Force."