Life Cycle of Role-Playing:
Debriefing, Assessment & Evaluation

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Jump directly to any 'Debriefing, Assessment & Evaluation' subsection, or review them in sequence:

Preliminary Observations
Disengage
Reflect & Learn
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Preliminary Observations

This final stage is an important but often overlooked stage of the whole online role-play experience.

EXAMPLE from Securities Markets Regulation RP (...description>>)

EXAMPLE from Environmental Decision-Making RP (...description>>)

EXAMPLE from Securities Markets Regulation RP (...description>>)

TERRENCE:
My reaction to the role-play was – I was excited about it because it wasn’t an exam. Whilst we were getting some guidance and we were given some guidelines from the lecturers it still was not enough to make me feel comfortable with the whole thing. But then moving myself out of my comfort zone is how I know I am going to work well anyway. So I set deadlines – I am going to be a journalist – so by 10 or 11pm each night when the press releases were issued I posted what I called "Gottliebsen’s View" which was a commentary of the events of the day. I also as the role-play went on started trying to talk to others and generate interviews with what I referred to as my "highly acclaimed series of interviews with very important people". I thought that was pretty cool. I got excited about that. I was a bit frustrated with the role-play – there were technical glitches with it, it was also a little frustrating when I was trying to develop a rapport or a relationship with other players and they weren’t interested. By the end of the role-play, I think because I forced myself to do such a heavy workload with it, I was sick of it, I had enough.

Any changes in your understanding?

TERRENCE:
What it helped me do was consolidate a lot of that theory. The one thing that is an overriding feature I got out of SMR in general which really got brought home in the role-play was ethics, because as a journalist I had a lot of opportunities to screw people. I could have twisted people’s words.
Prior to doing SMR I had never really considered ethics, it was always a big part of me without me realising it and now it is a real feature, I am thinking about it quite a lot. I was able to appreciate that in the real world, trying to ring someone up, going to lunches and dinners, you would always be working so it is not just a big junket trip, for someone like that he has always got to be on his mettle thinking about what is going on and all that sort of stuff. I think that is where I gained a real appreciation.

Mark Freeman and Michael Adams, UTS

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Disengage

After playing a character for two weeks or more, the student will be thinking and behaving as a role in the online role-play. One of the key objectives of this stage is to help the students disengage and re-engage in the real world. We cannot stress the importance of disengagement. It is very important that a student realises the difference between the simulated world and the real world and applies rational control over the experience in order to learn. You need to decide whether this is best done face-to-face or whether it can be adequately handled online.

EXAMPLE from Internet Gambling RP

EXAMPLE from Securities Markets Regulation RP (...description>>)

Some ideas to help students to disengage may be to ask players to:

• describe what has happened during the role-play (a recap)
• articulate (or list) outstanding issues arising from the role-play which have not been fully dealt with or completed in the role-play
• articulate any emotion which would not normally occur, but due to previous personal experience, was emotionally intense for them during the role-play.

Sometimes a secondary debriefing may be required. For psychologically intense role-plays, some learners may need further support to fully disengage from their roles. Maintain contact with learners for a further period of time and provide support if necessary.

  : Signal start of debrief physically

At the beginning of the debriefing process make sure that time is set aside for participants to derole (disengage from the action). At the end of the action and beginning of debriefing move the discussion to another forum. It may be a useful strategy to help signify moving to the next stage of the role-play process. In the classroom situation I have used simple strategies like removal of name tags/other role-play props or physically moving away from where the action took place.
Elizabeth Devonshire, USyd

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Reflect & Learn

Online role-play is a virtual environment designed to create experience and learning opportunities. However, it is important to help transfer this experience so that it can be used to influence decision making, alter behaviour and change attitudes.

To help achieve these points, the online role-play moderator can suggest that students reflect

• from the role’s point of view on how the role has performed
• from the student’s own point of view how the student has made the role lively, effective and faithful to the stakeholder viewpoint, and
• from a third objective point of view - how the developments in the role-play can be explained by any known theory.

  : Evaluation data

Collect useful anecdotes and other evaluative data (aided perhaps even by a video or an independent researcher) for future role-plays.
Mark Freeman, UTS

  : A second debrief?

It may be necessary to have a secondary debriefing session if one wasn't enough for some players. This may be an informal forum but the appreciation and satisfaction of the players will be well worth it.
Simon O'Mallon, DMIT

  : Debrief direction

The debriefing may take directions that you would not anticipate, let it. Learning, reflection and client satisfaction all occur here.
Simon O'Mallon, DMIT

  : Debrief time

Make sure enough time is set aside for the debriefing process to occur.
Elizabeth Devonshire, USyd

EXAMPLE from Securities Markets Regulation RP (...description>>)

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