Experimental Laboratory for Investigating Collaboration, Information-sharing, and Trust
Why ELICIT
The U.S. DoD (OASD/NII) Command and Control Research Program (CCRP) sponsored the design and development of the ELICIT platform for experimentation and classroom activities focused on information, cognitive, and social domain phenomena.
The purpose of ELICIT-related experimentation, teaching, and analysis is to investigate the cognitive and social impacts of C2 approach and organizational structure (e.g. information sharing, trust, shared awareness, and task performance).
ELICIT features:
- An instrumented environment
- Flexibly configurable
- Supports both person-in-the-loop and software agents
- Context provided by instructions/procedures
International Use
Mission and Conditions
- ELICIT presents participants with an information intensive situational awareness task:
- Goal: Find Who, What, Where, When of a future terrorist attack
- Information (factoids) is distributed to participants over time
- No participant is given sufficient information to solve their assigned or self-selected problem without receiving information from others
- Thus, information sharing is required for individuals or teams to succeed
- Controllable variables include roles, responsibilities, access to information and other participants
- ELICIT environment can be tailored for various organizational and management C2 approaches
Variables of Interest
Measures of Effectiveness
- Quality of awareness and shared awareness
- Correctness (Authorized Correct IDs)
- Timeliness (Person-Minutes with Correct IDs)
- Accuracy Rate (Correct IDs/Total IDs)
- Efficiency, given Effectiveness
- Productivity (correct IDs/Total Actions; Correct IDs/Person-Minutes Available)
- Speed (Time of Earliest Correct ID)
- Agility of the C2 Approach
- Effectiveness over Problem Difficulty
Data Extraction and Tools
- ELICIT generates output in a number of forms
- Participants survey responses and "scratch paper"
- Transaction logs recording all information exchange and identify action
- While rich in data, transaction logs must be processed in order to be formulated for analysis
- Transaction of each type must be extracted and tabulated
- Identify attempts must be graded for correctness
- Scripts (Python, C++) and macros (Visual Basic) are available to facilitate data structuring for analysis and feedback to participants
- Software is available for use by others
- Transactions can be parsed and organized into time intervals to enable observation of how behaviors change over time, and timing of IDs
- Whole-trial statistics can be used to characterize the experience and previous research efforts for purposes related to teaching
Community of Interest (COI)
The ELICIT software program platform, related tools and the empirical data that have been collected are available at no cost to members of the ELICIT Col.
- ELICIT CoI membership conditions:
- Conduct baseline runs for Hierarchy and Edge.
- Share all the experiments results with the CCRP and ELICIT community.
- Members are encouraged to craft and present papers at the ICCRTS and International Command and Control Journal.