Evocative Training

Training That Reflects Real Lives

When America's servicemen and women and their families face moments of crisis, we owe it to them to provide them with the best possible support. Through Evocative Training, SAIC guides clients in more effectively reaching out to these individuals — helping them to cope with loss, adjust to change, and take positive action to get back on their feet. Employing a rigorous instructional design process, our team of experienced communicators and trainers creates programs that evoke an emotional response that prepares trainees to learn. This kind of training is especially effective for emotionally difficult subjects such as suicide prevention and casualty notification.

SAIC developed Evocative Training to address a variety of comprehensive training challenges in such areas as psychological health, mental and physical resilience, and leadership development. This innovative methodology, created by a full-service communications and training team, begins with a rigorous instructional design process that helps ensure that all training objectives are met. The SAIC team then develops a multimedia training program that, at its heart, uses dynamic storytelling to fully engage the audience on both the necessity of the training and the subject to be trained.

An Experiential Approach to Learning

Each training project is carefully crafted with a particular audience in mind, emphasizing experiential learning but taking into account the variety of ways in which trainees acquire knowledge. A typical Evocative Training project is launched with a dramatic video designed to evoke an emotional response that prepares trainees to learn. Training packages also utilize powerful documentary interviews with experts, often from the trainees' peer group, who speak from personal experience related to the subject at hand.

SAIC Evocative Training is well suited for complex subjects such as:

• Leadership development
• Behavioral health
• Pre-deployment readiness
• Cultural awareness
• Critical-duty preparation

The audience for this type of training is often reluctant, so it is critical to engage the interest of trainees early with a compelling story and characters with whom the audience can identify. It has proven to be particularly effective for training on sensitive topics such as sexual assault prevention, suicide prevention, and casualty notification and assistance.

Recent Evocative Training Projects

SAIC has completed complex, comprehensive, and award-winning Evocative Training projects for:

• U.S. Air Force — Sexual Assault Prevention Training
• U.S. Army Casualty and Mortuary Affairs Operations Center — Casualty Notification and Casualty Assistance
  • 2007 Thoth Award for Internal Videos, Public Relations Society of the National Capital Region
  • 2007 Award of Excellence, The Videographer Awards, Original Music Score
  • 2007 Award of Excellence, The Videographer Awards
• U.S. Marine Corps — Casualty Assistance Calls Officer Training
  • 2008 MarCom Award, Platinum, Association of Marketing and Communications Professionals
• U.S. Army — Suicide Prevention Training
• U.S. Marine Corps — Suicide Prevention Training

U.S. Army Casualty Assistance and Notification Training

Every day, Soldiers answer the nation's call to face unprecedented challenges in an increasingly complicated world. And every day, the U.S. Army works to equip and train these men and women to give them the absolute greatest chance of survival. Sometimes, however, that isn't enough.

In these tragic circumstances, the Army follows through on its pledge to take care of fallen Soldiers' surviving families, providing them with the information and support that they deserve during this most difficult time. To do so, active Soldiers are called upon and trained as Casualty Notification Officers (CNOs) and Casualty Assistance Officers (CAOs).

When the need arises, these Soldiers must be trained quickly. The training involves not just technical procedures, but more importantly, how to empathize with survivors and deal with the emotional demands of the duty. To improve the quality and consistency of training, SAIC's communications experts developed a multimedia program called Evocative Training. Featuring print materials, videos, and Web tools, the program can be used to train new CNOs and CAOs, wherever they are located, when called to perform these duties and to provide rapid refresher training at the time of assignment.

Strategy

SAIC developed a multi-pronged strategy that included:

• Producing dramatic scenarios of a fictionalized casualty to serve as the emotional foundation for the training, combined with documentary interviews with CAOs, CNOs, survivors, chaplains, and others involved in the process
• Developing a classroom version of the training featuring print and video learning aids
• Designing an online, multimedia version of the training, available on demand for refresher training

SAIC's communications experts directed professional actors to create a broadcast-quality program that dramatized the entire process of assisting the survivors of a fallen Soldier, enabling trainees to step into the shoes of CNOs and CAOs to experience the emotional facets and learn the technical aspects of their duties.

SAIC's team also produced print products such as guides, manuals, CDs, and other materials designed to complement the video training.

Results

The Army has used SAIC's Evocative Training materials nationwide and reports that the CNOs and CAOs are now better prepared to support the families of those who have sacrificed their lives in service to their country. Course participants have praised the training, particularly noting how the realism of the dramatizations helped them connect to course materials.

In 2007, the dramatic scenario video received the Public Relations Society of America's Thoth Award (First Place) for internal videos.