Understanding the characters and what’s at stake will provide context for the Objectives that your students will need to accomplish. This is key because it helps ground and rationalize the tasks for a student so they aren’t just moving from task to task without an understanding of WHY they’re doing it.

And finally, the References area within the scenario itself provides external links to study materials that will help students feel fully equipped to accomplish their mission.

By helping students get equipped with the right environment, mindset, context, and tools before beginning the “workout”, lots of potential issues can be avoided. ???????? Productivity for the win!

3. Set A “Workout” Goal

Huge goals like successfully completing a Specialized Scenario without any hints can seem impossible to the beginner cyber ninja, and often that “impossible” goal can be enough to derail even the most motivated of students.

The best way to avoid this mistake is to set a tangible goal for every single “workout”.

Let’s imagine that the beginner student has been assigned a Foundational Scenario with 52 Objectives to be completed within a week. Some students might attempt to study outside of the scenario, then doggedly work their way through the entire scenario in one evening.

Other students, however, might divide those 52 Objectives into bite-sized chunks, completing 8 or 9 Objectives every day.

Neither approach is right or wrong, but we’d bet our ninja masks that those who set their goal of completing 8 or 9 Objectives per day have the highest likelihood of not only completing their assignment, but also remembering what they learned along the way.

By setting a measurable, achievable goal every time they train, students create their own motivation through the act of disciplined achievement. That motivation means they’ll continue to persist, despite it not being easy.

And more often than not, disciplined persistence leads to success.

4.Switch It Up

Most gym-goers are familiar with the dreaded plateau: that situation where, no matter how many squats you do, you’re just not seeing results anymore.

But this is not often the case! Incremental improvement is still happening, but those first big leaps forward feel smaller and smaller as you improve, particularly when you’re looking at those leaps up close.

So how do you help your students combat brain fatigue and the demotivation of seemingly-lackluster results?

Step back and take stock. Don’t forget to build perspective into a “workout” routine. This doesn’t necessarily imply that your students will need a break (we’ll touch more on that a little later) or that their tracking needs to be tweaked (again, more on that in a moment), but rather that it might just be time to switch it up a bit.

Consider substituting some new training material for a bit. Tackle a Cyber Learning Game, dive into a new tool, or take a tour of the Project Ares gym and have a chat about what other areas look interesting and exciting.

By giving their digital forensics “muscle” a chance to relax and recharge (and by giving the brain an opportunity to do the same), the plateau that your students imagine will seem much less of a reality from their new perspective.

Improvements are happening. They just have a way of being hard to see when we get too close.

5. Take Breaks

Another great way to gain some perspective is to build in a real break. Even those most intense HIIT workouts will feature a 10-second rest, and the Project Ares gym is no different. We’re only human, after all.

We know the effects of staring at a screen for too long. We know how much more productive we feel when we remember to take a moment to get some water, stretch our legs, and go outside.

If long-term learning is the goal, breaks that are long enough to be relaxing (but not so long that they cause a loss of focus!) should be a part of your students’ “workout” routines in the Project Ares gym. This may seem like an obvious observation, but as anyone with a Nintendo Switch can tell you, gamification has a way of defying the time/space continuum. So set an alarm and remember to advise your students to take a break now and then!

6. Track Progress

One of the most important assets available to you to keep your students driving toward success is a progress tracker.

When goals that seemed so far away to them at the beginning are long-accomplished , it can be hard for them to remember what those initial micro-successes felt like. The ability to show real, tangible progress can keep your students from doubting whether their effort is really getting them any closer to their goal.

In the gym, a progress tracker can look like an app, a personal trainer’s binder, or even just a regular analog notebook where you might track the heaviness of the weights you lifted, the time of your mile, or the muscle groups you focused on.

Tying It Together

Ultimately, getting to the root cause of an issue is important because it allows you to streamline the solution process and develop preventative action to mitigate future issues.

By proactively implementing these 6 solutions into your training program, you’ll help your students have every resource they need to be successful in the Project Ares gym!

PS: We all know how important it is to be able to work as part of a group in the professional space — after all, “There’s no ‘I’ in TEAM”.