Roni Linser

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Using Role-Play Simulations for teaching and
Learning - motivation and pedagogy

• Roni Linser
• Fablusi P/L
• Email ronil_at_simplay.net
• www.fablusi.com
• www.simplay.net

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Agenda

• Communication is in the true sense the
  organizing process of a community (GH Mead
  Mind, Self and Society, 1934)
• Communication and ICT Revolution .
• Rule vs Role-play simulations
• Pedagogy Dynamic Goal Based Learning
• Examples?
• What worked , what did not and what do students
  say?

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ICT and the space of learning

• The rapid development of ICT over the last
  decades of the 20th century and associated with
  the globalisation phenomenon is having a profound
  effect, indeed revolutionary, on the future of
  education, even if it is not yet fully
  appreciated.
• One way educational institutions were effected by
  these processes is in the transformation of
  iSpaces (interaction spaces).
• The separation of institutional spaces from
  learning spaces on which educational institutions
  depended for their survival has had substantial
  effects on teaching and learning.

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ICT and the space of learning

• Educational institutions in Europe, like schools
  and universities, have literally been the spaces
  for learning at least since the 12th and 13th
  centuries.
• They have become a global model for education
  both in terms of the content and learning space
  since the 18th and 19th centuries though not
  without challenge.
• The library, the classroom, labs and lecture
  halls, as well as paper, writing instruments, and
  printing presses constituted a technology of
  learning that is today being supplemented, some
  would say replaced, by ICT. .

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Learning vs. Institutional Space

• The pedagogical structure of role-play
  simulations
• Dynamic goal based learning (vs. GBL - Roger
  Schank)
• Role-play
• Web mediated communication collaboration(see
  www.simplay.net/research.html Pedagogical
  foundations of web-based simulations)
• The uniqueness of this structure
• It separates the learning space, where
  participants learn from the experience
• From
• the institutional and organizational environment
  which provide the resources for learning
  including moderators or educational facilitators

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simulations

• A 'simulation' is an artificial environment in
  which a particular set of conditions is created
  in order to study or experience something that
  exists or could exist in reality.

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Role based versus Rule based simulations

• The simulations we are discussing are not
  computer simulations of physical systems.
  Role-play simulations are for modelling social
  interactions placed within a context.
• The role of the technology (including its
  computational power)is to facilitate
  communication in environments that model some
  social reality
• The end result is that participants experience
  the dilemmas and issues common to the
  institutions which are being modeled.

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Role based versus Rule based simulations

• Rule based Games (eg. Chess, Football)
• abstract rules
• abstract roles (attached resources)
• specific objectives (win/loss)
• environment . (attached resources)
• Role based Games (eg. Murder Mystery)
• social rules
• specific roles (attached resources)
• abstract objectives
• environment (attached resources)

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Role based versus Rule based simulations

• ultimate abstract rules
• yes-no
• philosophers terminology negation
• Psychologist terminology presence/absence
• computer algorithms manipulate these into more
  complex abstract rules

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Role based versus Rule based simulations

• computer algorithms vs human social rules
• playing a computer
• the out put is determined by predefined
  algorithms
• playing other people
• out put determined by human intelligence/emotions/
  values which are more or less can be followed one
  minute and not the next

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Playing a role

• In our simulations 'playing a role'is meant in 4
  senses   1. playing a game to have fun   2.
  playing a character in a theatre play   3.
  playing with possibilities 4. playing a
  musical instrument

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RPS Information System
     
 
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• Administrator
• Guardian Angel
• Manipulative Devil
• Resource resident educator/ learner
• Improvising story teller

• Pedagogical objectives
• Students/Participants
• goals
• Hierarchy
• Teacher centred
• Set time and space
• Interaction
• Resources

• Game objectives
• Roles
• goals
• Virtual social structure
• Learner centred
• Flexi time space
• interaction
• Just in time Resources

Author
Mod
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Institutional Teaching Space
Author
Learning Space
Admin
Mod
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Structure of some role-play games

• political science specific roles/open ended
  objectives/rules/
• Nursing abstract - yet specific roles/specific
  rules/ specific objectives
• Literature constraints defined by the book -
  characters/plot open ended objectives given a
  social dilemma that deals with social mores and
  rules
• educational design more abstract roles yet
  specific/ specific objectives/ flexible but
  fairly structured rules of university discourse
• marketing abstract roles/ specific objectives/
  rules incl. industry standards
• military - highly structured objective/ abstract
  roles/ defined military standards of hierarchy
  and cooperation
• staff development purposes. sexual harassment -
  abstract yet specific roles/open ended
  objectives/open ended yet defined rules

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Why do Role play work as a learning strategy?

• Identity
• DGBL
• Anonymity,
• Do things you would not otherwise do
• Discovery
• Self-reflection

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What worked in certain online role-plays and what
did not?

• worked
• open ended objectives/negotiated
• structured rules
• specific roles
• did not work
• highly structured rules
• specific objectives/
• abstract roles

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Thank you !!!for different types of role-plays
and research paperswww.simplay.net