The ‘Quality in Further Education’ Role Play activity

‘Case study’ prepared for the University of Aberdeen PGCert Higher Education Teaching and Learning - e-Learning Module. Based on a slides originally prepared by Sarah Cornelius, Carole Gordon and Margaret Harris (University of Aberdeen) for a presentation given at the SOLSTICE conference, Edge Hill University, 2010

http://www.uow.edu.au/cedir/enrole/index.html

What is online role play?

Examples of online role plays:

Riddle, 2009 ‘The Campaign’ – political advisors and journalists in last four weeks of election campaign (used email)

Jordan, 2009 Role play for construction law – used wikis and forums for collaborative problem solving

Gao, et al., 2009 Undertook a comparison of face to face and second life role plays on concepts of motivation

Keeffe and Austin, 2012 – Educational inclusion role play – participants clarify and resolve the implications of an administrative decision to suspend a student with Asperger’s from school. Used web conferencing for briefing/de briefing, anonymous online discussions for activity

‘Quality in FE’ Role Play

Course context:- Teaching Qualification Further Education (TQFE)- Adult work-based learners- Blended programme – role play delivered as an online workshop- Small groups (approx.15 students/tutor)

• Design principles:– Real time – over a 2 hour period– Authentic activity – which reflects an issue of genuine concern and discussion

within FE, virtual working and online meetings are also feature of many professional contexts

– Anonymity – participants are identifiable only as their roles to allow for free and frank discussion

– Familiar technology – uses online discussions in institutional VLE with which participants are familiar.

The Scenario:You have been invited to join a working group to consider issues of quality in your College. You are about to have your first meeting and at this meeting you need to consider what quality is and what it means in your College.

Lecturer

Student

College managerSupport staff – e.g. receptionist, janitor, librarian

The Roles: Student – an elected representative from the students’ association Tutor – an elected representative from the teaching staff in the CollegeSupport staff – you can choose whether to be a janitor, librarian, learning support advisor, member of cleaning staff or any other support role. You are an elected representative of the support staffManager – a member of the senior management team with an interest in quality

Tutor allocates participants to roles and groups (min group size 4 – if larger increase number of each role attending meeting)

Task 1: Participants post an opening statement on their view of quality from their role’s perspective

Task 2: Participants read and comment on other postings – ask questions, discuss etc.

Task 3: Participants reflect on their opening position – has it shifted in response to the discussions?

Task 4: (if in a large group) – participants visit another discussion and compare issues etc.

Taks 5: Participants post ‘out of role’ reflections on the role play and the experience of online interaction. Tutor summarises, suggests next steps etc.

Process

Implementation: anonymous WebCT discussion (now usingBlackboard discussionForums)

Research

• Qualitative investigative approach– Analysis of transcripts of role play discussions by

three researchers:455 messages

36 students

7 role play groups

– Semi structured interviews with 8 student volunteers

• Findings related to role engagement, anonymity and authenticity presented here

Role engagement

Were roles played effectively online?

Generally yes…

“[other people played their roles] brilliantly [...] everyone took their roles really seriously […] it almost felt you were speaking to the actual people”

Lecturers: educational jargon

Students: informal

College managers: Formal language, use of ‘we’

Support staff: varied

Good morning […] it is clearly important as management that we ensure that standards are maintained…

…surely their [sic] should be differentiation

I am off for a smoke to think about my thoughts, will be back in 5 to let you know

there is nothing worse than being talked at for hours at a time!!! BORING

Evidence- Voices

What helped ‘performance’?

• familiarity with the role• direct questions to individuals

– “As a tutor, I would like to ask a manager how they believe that they can measure the quality of their lecturer through their training”

• exchanges with others– “the questions or the responses that were coming back […]

made you think ‘well no, I’m going to defend my college’”– “the responses of others in real time helped as they made me

respond as if I was a janitor”

• visualisation of real or imagined events

What hindered engagement?

Technical/navigation issues - “Help, I’m lost, which group am I in?”

Pace- reading/typing speed

Possible playing out of real life power relationships- “My comments were passed by the others as not important” (domestic)

- “I was only really speaking to the librarian. The lecturer or the Principal never came into that line of conversation. I didn’t have a real place in the conversation” (janitor)

Real Anonymity?

• Generally accepted that anonymity was not ‘real’, but had an impact:

– “I didn’t care who the other member of the team was that I was responding to because I was just responding to them as a job title and not as a person within our group”

– “I think I would have given my comments even if it was face-to-face […] but [anonymity] made it interesting”

The anonymity ‘challenge’– “I…worked out who some people were based on their

comments. The manager I instantly worked out”

– “I had guessed one of them…but the others I was quite happy not to know who they were”

• Known peers may affect voice– “If its someone you know well you’re trying to be humourous with

them, and if it’s someone you don’t know so well you’re probably being a bit more formal”

• But some mysteries remained– “I didn’t try to find out, but I would have liked to know who the

jannie […] was”

Authenticity

• Is the activity realistic?– Online meetings do take place– “If everyone is engaged it makes it more real”

• Backstage communication?– “There was someone in the same workroom, but in a

different [role play] group. She was laughing at what she was reading, and I was laughing at what I was reading. But we weren’t communicating with each other at all”

Effectiveness

• Appreciation of different perspectives– “[I now realise] how little I understood about the role

before I started”

– “The role play makes you realise the complexity of challenges for individual posts and how quality threads through all areas of the college.”

• Application of process– “We’ve done two [similar online role play activities

with our own students]”

What does this tell us?

• Effective role engagement in online role-play is facilitated by: – Familiar roles – Discourse with other roles in real-time– Anonymity

• Barriers to engagement include– Technical/navigational issues– Lack of engagement of others– Pace of real-time activity

ReferencesGao F, Noh, J J and Koehler M J (2009) Comparing role-playing

activities in second life and face-to-face environments. Journal of Interactive Learning Research 20(4) 423-443

Jordan, L (2009) Using online role-play to assess distance learning students in construction law. CEBE Case Study http://www.cebe.heacademy.ac.uk/learning/casestudies/case_pdf/LindsayJordan09.pdf

Keeffe M and Austin L (2012) Reciprocity, the rascal of resolution: collaborative problem solving in an online role play. Proceedings of CSEDU’11 pp252-257

Riddle M D (2009) The Campaign: a case study in identity construction through performance. ALT-J 17(1) 63-72

Sarah Corneliuss.cornelius@abdn.ac.ukSeptember 2012