Acquiring knowledge-in-use in virtual training environments: A theory driven design process

In daily work routines of police officers, situations may occur that have not been trained previously because of high costs, because of the danger, time or effort involved. But some knowledge-in-use is required to respond adequately to these complex situations, thus virtual training seems to be the obvious choice. In order to develop a virtual training environment, we need an understanding of the underlying learning processes. This paper explicates a theory-driven design process of a virtual training environment and its application in a German state police department. We conceptualize how the acquisition of knowledge-in-use in virtual training environments takes place and focus on what is possible in virtual training.