designers as learners:
igniting the spark for web-based roleplay

Position:

Teacher, Child Studies

Organisation:

North Coast Institute, Coffs Harbor, NSW

Email:

margaret.spears@
tafensw.edu.au

I am a full time teacher of Child Studies at Coffs Harbour Education Campus. Coffs Harbour is half way between Sydney and Brisbane in Australia. Child Studies students complete a two year Diploma course that enables them to be trained workers in preschools and long day care centres.

My journey into online role-play began last year during the Facilitating and Managing e-learning (FAMe) course where I was a student. I was involved in a number of different role-plays and discovered to my surprise that I really enjoyed the experience. This was very contrary to my expectations as I tend to avoid role-play in f2f situations. Last year I was involved in 3 different role plays. Needlestick, based in the Fablusi software, and two email roleplay games Galactic Wormhole and a spam email exercise.

Designer as Learner

I believe to be an effective designer of any learning experience, you need to thoroughly understand the medium. I look now look at my first attempts to write and design content for the Children's Services Online course and cringe. I would do many things very differently. For example, I found the experiences I designed encouraged learners to interact with the software, but not with each other. This is an element that I now think is vital to building successful learning communities.

Current involvement with role-play

At the moment I'm not using any role-play. This is because we are not currently offering any online courses. However, now that I am a facilitator on the FAMe course and involved in the online teaching strategies modules I hope to have the opportunity to work with Marie to co-facilitate a role-play. I would really like to see if from the other perspective.