Designing Web-Based Training: How to Teach Anyone Anything Anywhere Anytime

6.11. Role-playing scenario

Children learn much adult behavior by playing at being an adult. Likewise, adults can learn much by playing the role of someone else.

In a role-playing scenario, the instructor states a goal and assigns learners roles in achieving that goal. Learners research their roles. They then collaborate via chat, conferencing, discussion, or multi-user domains to play out their roles to achieve the goal.

6.11.1. When to use role-playing scenarios

Role-playing is a valuable way to teach subtle, interpersonal skills and to reveal the hidden complexity of many human endeavors. Here are some common uses of role-playing activities:

• Force someone to view events from a different perspective. Give an environmental activist the role of a real-estate developer.

• Allow someone to experience events online that they would not experience in real life. For example, let a man experience sexual harassment as a woman.

• Demonstrate the many perspectives necessary for a complex undertaking. Have a management team guide a project from initial idea to successful product.

• Teach interpersonal skills. Hold a committee meeting to find an effective compromise among competing ideas, groups, and individuals.

6.11.2. How role-playing scenarios work

6.11.3. Example of a role-playing scenario

In the following example, participants simulate the meeting of the town Architectural Review Committee ...