Using Crisis Action Planning Exercises to Assess Program Learning Outcomes in Support of Outcomes-Based Military Education

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Crisis action planning exercises (CAPEXs) and simulations, as limited forms of wargaming, are increasingly being used in military academic settings to evaluate learning objectives at the individual and program level. While there are reasons to believe that these exercises may be useful tools for programmatic assessment, questions remain about how to determine the conditions under which they should be used for this purpose. This article explores the tradeoffs of using these tools to evaluate program effectiveness and offers a tool to assist assessment designers in deciding when and how to adopt a crisis simulation for program assessment. Using evidence from the CAPEX at the U.S. Naval War College as a case study, the authors argue that using simulations specifically for program assessment requires additional cautions and considerations.