Using Adaptivity and Personalization in Training People on Occupational Accident Prevention Based on the Artificial Intelligence Analysis of Interactions

Fiction is an ancient virtual reality technology that has proven valuable for purposes of education. Fictional stories are the flight simulators of issues in human social life. Contemporary information and communication technologies allow for more than telling stories. In virtual realities, humans can actively participate in stories they drive to the end they wish. Beyond the limits of interactive digital storytelling, this means interactive story engagement. The potential of story engagement is deployed for the prevention of occupational accidents to preserve human lives, to avoid human injuries, the damage of installations and financial losses. Prevention training is designed to appear playfully based on the authors’ original concept of time travel prevention games. Trainees who failed to complete their task - thereby possibly ruining a (fortunately only virtual) technical installation - are enabled to virtually travel back in time to impact the fate. In the condition of training with time travel prevention games, designing spaces of stories to be experienced playfully is an ambitious variant of gamification. The unfolding of personalized stories at play time is controlled by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The key task of AI is to adapt to largely varying needs and desires of different human trainees. The AI guides the trainee through the exciting experience of an ultimately successful story. Under conditions of repeatedly travelling back in time, sometimes even to the same destination, the game AI has the opportunity to modify past states according to a trainee’s particular needs. Modifications of past states (mops, for short) are a novel technology of personalized didactics.