As military service men and women return home from their deployments, they often face a new enemy on the home front — post-combat stress symptoms. Many transition through this period successfully, but research shows that 15 percent of deployed soldiers experience post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can cause behavioral problems and relationship struggles with family and friends.
WILL Interactive, Inc., a company involved in interactive training programs, teamed up with Option Technologies to help soldiers learn coping strategies to ameliorate the effects of PTSD.
The War Inside is an interactive video that, when combined with Option Technologies’ audience response technology, allows an entire audience to simultaneously make choices that take the video in a direction that reflects the choices they make through live audience polling. The video shows soldiers and their families in various high-stress scenarios, and viewers used wireless keypads and the ARS system to select a course of action and then experience the consequences of their choices.
The film premiered at the fifth annual G.I. Film Festival Washington, D.C. Special guests included Gary Sinise, William Devane and Lou Diamond Phillips. Florida Congressman Allen West and other members of Congress and military leaders were also in attendance. Also in attendance were soldiers, journalists, authors, and filmmakers.
According to Kyle Hoover, senior interactive consultant and one of the event's facilitators, the event was a big success and the keypad technology was an important factor of the training program's success.
"[Option Technologies’] interactive keypads were critical in drawing the audience in and making them feel like part of the presentation and the decision-making process," said Hoover. "Without the technology, the audience would not have had any input other than the old style method of raising hands. It was an effective way to get a room full of people involved in the interactive program."
Another key factor of the success of the event was the involvement of Option Technology in the technical and logistical details of the presentation. Having an Option Technology technician running the background technology was extremely important, according to David Versaw, CFO and director of business development at WILL Interactive, Inc. It freed up the presenters to concentrate on the presentation and engaging with the audience.
One of the key success points about the GI Film Festival premiere was that WILL Interactive Inc. could get this program in front of a large audience. The training generated a lot of discussion about the topic after the presentation, and the audience feedback about the keypad technology was good. Versaw said the company hopes to expand the training to other branches of the military and thinks this kick-off of The War Inside will go a long way toward bringing attention to this type of interactive training.
According to Versaw, WILL Interactive Inc. has done similar programs with suicide prevention training for the military, guidance for avoiding foreclosure, and programs for school children about making good decisions with respect to substance abuse, bullying, and peer pressure.
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