Changing Perspectives: Enhancing Learning Efficacy with the After-Action Review in Virtual Reality Training for Police 5 95 INTRODUCTION Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming an increasingly popular training tool for police agencies (Zechner et al., 2023; Uhl et al., 2022). Utilizing high fidelity VR tools, police instructors are able to simulate various complex situations (e.g., Fejdyś et al., 2022). They can do so by utilizing a wide variety of locations, select a range of avatars to appear the virtual environment, and include different sounds to create realistic training scenarios (Kleygrewe, Hutter, Koedijk, et al., 2023; Zechner et al., 2023). VR therefore provides police agencies the opportunity to train their officers for complex tasks in a safe and versatile environment (Giessing, 2021). In the field of policing, VR has been used to teach police officers a variety of skills. For instance, VR training was conducted to investigate police officers’ helping behavior toward victims of police racial aggression (Kishore et al., 2022). Police officers trained firearms skills in VR under light, moderate and frustrating difficulties (Muñoz et al., 2020) and were taught breathing regulation techniques in stressful situations (Brammer et al., 2021). Thus, VR appears to be a versatile training tool in which police officers can train and perform relevant police-specific tasks while being exposed to stress-inducing environments (Caserman et al., 2022; Garcia et al., 2019). VR offers the opportunity to provide objective, technology-enhanced feedback on training performance (Cosman et al., 2002). By recording the virtual training scenarios, VR systems enable instructors and trainees to review the training using the VR after-action review (AAR). AAR is a common debrief procedure in military and other fields that rely on performance reviews to enhance learning (Raemer et al., 2011). While originally designed as a debrief tool for real-life combat training exercises, the AAR has been adapted to simulation-based environments in different fields (e.g., health care education, Sawyer & Deering, 2013). In a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis of VR for police training, Giessing (2021) points out that the VR AAR provides police instructors and trainees with unique feedback capabilities to foster the learning experience of virtual training sessions. For instance, technical features such as perspective taking may foster learning by providing concrete visual performance feedback and thus make the debrief with the VR AAR less abstract than a verbal debrief after real-life training. Similar prospects of the AAR to enhance learning through the use of objective performance feedback have been discussed in a SWOT analysis of CBRNe training (i.e., training to prepare for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and explosives incidents) in virtual environments (Murtinger et al., 2021). Whilst the potential of the VR AAR to enhance learning has been noticed, empirical research on the influence of feedback through simulation-based debriefing in police training is sparse.
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