Dovetailing Pedagogy and Technology for Training with Time Travel

In technology-enhanced education, there is always a mutual impact between pedagogy and technology. To maximize educational effectiveness while leveraging the appeal of contemporary technology, educators and developers have introduced time travel exploratory games. To meet the needs of occupational accident prevention - a task of societal relevance for the protection of human health and life, the avoidance of damage and major financial losses, and for the protection of the environment - these exploratory games have been enhanced into time travel prevention games. The phenomenon of time travel allows for, and even fosters, a deeper dovetailing of pedagogy and technology. During accident prevention training, participants who have caused a - fortunately, only virtual - disaster are offered the option of time travel. By returning to an earlier stage of the training, they have the opportunity to change the outcome and to achieve better results on their next attempt. This approach relies on insights into the role of human mental time travel in episodic knowledge representation. From a pedagogical perspective, educational game design means the anticipation and preparation of stories of success to be experienced during game-based training. Essential elements of these stories should be memorable and even worth retelling. From a technological perspective, a trainee’s mental time travel is digitally implemented - technology makes daydreams come true. Within practical training modules, several original and innovative concepts have been developed, implemented, and applied, such as modifications of the past that make pedagogical concepts operational.