Online Role-play -
a beginner’s perspective

What were your reactions and feelings to this activity?

I hate role-play in a f2f situation. I don’t think that people give realistic responses and find that basically people tell me (or who ever) what they want to hear. Either that or they are so over obnoxious that they are over the top. But saying that, I really enjoyed this activity. I think because it wasn’t face to face so to speak and you had logged in as Chris learner, it felt more real. I still wonder though if I would have said those things and if Chris would have responded that way.

What was good and bad about the experience? Make value judgements

I found that it was a great activity overall. I liked being asked to apply my knowledge and actually get some feedback on it. I was disappointed that many of the others didn’t go back in and respond to their posts. I find it interesting to see how different people handle student issues. Considering I’m not a great encourager of role-play in the classroom, this is definitely a strategy I would use when developing learning materials.

Make sense out of this. What is really going on? What happened?

I was forced to respond to a student (oops learner) in a very public way that needed to be accountable and appropriate. It also gave me the opportunity to practice some of my reflective listening skills and help a learner come to a win- win situation in a safe environment. I want it to continue now though. I want to know if I managed to get Chris to change her way of doing things or will she just slip back into the old pattern.

What can be concluded from these experiences and the analysis you have undertaken? What did you learn?

• Role play online seems much more realistic than role play in a f2f situation
• I have the ability (well in a fictious experience) to bring a learner around and to change their behaviour.
• This could be used in the children’s services online course in lots of ways.

What are you going to do differently in this type of situation next time?

I don’t think I’d do anything differently for once. I would be interested to see how the other learners responded to my posts.

What steps are you going to take on the basis of what you have learnt? How does this relate to your work-based project?

I’m not sure if it has any implications in the ItTO but if I can get the ANTA toolbox Children’s Services online, I will be looking at incorporating role-play into that.