Abstract:

A central content focus of the study module "Work and Organizational Psychology" in the bachelor's degree program in psychology at the University of Hagen (FeU) is job design, which deals with the effect of work on the working person. The critical teaching of theoretical basics of psychological work design, which is mainly done by reading and discussing relevant theories and research results, is unfortunately mostly lacking in the experience of practical job design training during these studies. This can only be achieved by experiencing a simulated training situation and trying out job design skills as well as experiencing the effects of different forms of job design. Nevertheless, confrontation, one's own experience, and trying out one’s job design skills on the one hand, as well as intensive reflection on what is experienced during such a work design simulation is an essential prerequisite for the acquisition of appropriate action competencies. The primary learning and training objective of the planned didactic innovation in acquiring qualifications based on competencies and skills in work psychology in the sense of analyzing, evaluating, and designing work tasks according to defined human criteria, in addition, going through the corresponding job design simulation task and the subsequent reflection should lead to a deeper and better understanding of the differentiation between structural and behavioral prevention, which is central in occupational health psychology, as well as condition-related and person-related interventions. Through minor adjustments, other learning objectives can also be focused on. Methodological qualifications based on corresponding competencies and skills are also developed through a systematic work analysis, which the students have to carry out following a work task they have experienced themselves. This paper describes a novel approach towards integrating work task simulation-based training of skills related to configuring relevant features for work design with the Qualifications-Based Learning Model (QBLM) approach. For this purpose, the theoretical background and the already existing tools are described in this paper. Hertel's Computer Store application from 2003 is used as the basis for the simulation. Here, a single, isolated work task is simulated. Based on this, a concept for the simulation is presented. A central element of the planned learning game is the students' own experience of well and poorly designed work tasks in terms of the specific manifestation of psychologically relevant work characteristics (e.g., psychological stress). For this purpose, the students will process one or more specifically designed work tasks that are digitally simulated. Psychological stresses, such as interruptions, time pressure, are thus made tangible. Therefore, the paper presents the overall concept for the learning game and in more detail the concept for the single packages of the learning game. Those packages are sub-applications of the main learning game in which the students have to deal with different tasks simultaneously. In those packages, the psychological stresses and other parameters will be measured and experienced. To measure the parameters a concept will be presented that stores different parameters during the simulation. Also, the first implementations and evaluations will be presented in this paper. The paper concludes with a summary and the remaining challenges of the approach.

Keywords:

QBLM, Qualifications-Based Learning, Learning Analytics, Work Task Simulation, Work Design, Serious/Applied Gaming, ACT-R, Applied Games, Game-based Learning.