'Case study' presentation created for the University of Aberdeen PGCert Higher Education Teaching and Learning, e-Learning Module. October 2012

1. 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

2. What is online role play?
http://www.uow.edu.au/cedir/enrole/index.html

3. 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

4. ‘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)

5. 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.
• 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.

6. The Roles:
Student – an elected representative from the students’
association
Tutor – an elected representative from the teaching staff in the
College
Student
Support 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 staff
Manager – a member of the senior management team with an
interest in quality
College manager
Lecturer
Support staff – e.g. receptionist,
janitor, librarian

7. Process
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.

8. Implementation:
anonymous
WebCT discussion
(now using
Blackboard discussion
Forums)

9. 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

10. 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”

11. Good morning […] it is clearly important as management
that we ensure that standards are maintained…
College managers:
Formal language, Lecturers:
use of ‘we’ educational
jargon
Evidence …surely their [sic] should be
differentiation
- Voices
there is nothing worse than being talked
at for hours at a time!!! BORING
Students:
informal
I am off for a smoke to think about my thoughts,
will be back in 5 to let you know
Support staff: varied

12. 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

13. 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)

14. 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”

15. 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”

16. 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”

17. 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]”

18. 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

19. References
Gao 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/LindsayJ
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 Cornelius
s.cornelius@abdn.ac.uk
September 2012