Papers which outline new developments can be divided into two parts.
The first part reflects significant improvements in the quality of instrumentation
acquired by institutions. However, in more recent years this has shifted towards the
second category where papers report on equipment and facilities developed by institutions
themselves.
The Changing Face of Simulation
As simulation developed from skills training to being a tool for the
inculcation of higher order knowledge attributes, there has been appropriate development
in the trends of reported work. The salient features of these trends are indicated below:
The Visual Transition
There has been an increasing inclusion of visual facilities in
simulation environments. In the most recent survey in the Asia Pacific region, which
generally reflects the worldwide situation, it is not clear that the visual adjunct is
necessarily being used to enhance the instrumental environment as opposed to meeting new
and disparate needs. Figure 1 shows an analysis for the Asia Pacific Region for the 1996
INSLC which would appear to illustrate this perceived trend. A questionnaire filled by 14
centres in the region, comprising 21 simulators of which 5 included visual adjuncts, was
used to determine the number of citations for arbitrarily defined training elements, for
the courses these institution were conducting. From other parts of the questionnaire it
was evident that institutions in the region are trending towards the implementation of
internally developed or externally acquired visual adjuncts. Hence, an evolutionary
process is underway which will define new roles for institutions with such facilities
Figure 1: Comparative Usage of Instrumental
vs Visual Simulation per Training Element
Procedures Training to Decision Making
The earlier Proceedings show a strong emphasis on ways and means to aid
procedural training. This included parallel indexing, constant radius turns, differential
vectors etc. Over the years this has modulated to an emphasis on decision making
processes, exercise design, validity of training, and analysis of course design.
