Give students decision making power by facilitating a Role-Play activity.
What is a role-play activity?
Role-play is an engaging in-class activity that allows student to navigate a real-world scenario. The activity is also an opportunity for students to practice soft skills and apply key course concepts.
To model a role-play activity, we produced a narrative video featuring faculty member Brian Hanssen, a Clinical Associate Professor of Management Communication here at Stern.
Why use a role-play activity, as opposed to one I’m more familiar with?
This collaborative exercise requires students to work together to successfully reach their objective. A role-play activity teaches students that effective collaboration is essential to productive, high-quality performance – a lesson students will carry with them long after they earn their degree.
If your students often disengage from group work or don’t see the value in working with others, we recommend introducing more activities like role-play that require interdependent tasks. This way, students can exercise both their hard and soft skills and be better prepared for careers in the field.
What do I do after?
After the activity, you’ll want to facilitate self-reflection and a group discussion.
Ask students to write a brief reflective paragraph or bullet points; encourage them to include three key takeaways from the experience. By doing so, students will observe strengths or weaknesses in their skills and thus, develop metacognition.
Students should then share their reflection with their role-play partner and, time-permitting, the wider class. You can also use your final part of your class to solicit feedback from students on what they liked or would change in a future role-play activity. You can use this feedback as a guide to improve the next role-play you facilitate.
If you’re interested in learning about engaging classroom activities, check out our activities page on the LSL website.
We’d like to hear from you!
Our team is interested in hearing how you:
- Get students to do the reading for your class
- Solicit, organize, and answer students’ questions in class
Set up a time to meet with the LSL
As always, our team at the Learning Science Lab is available to help answer questions and guide you toward more advanced resources when you’re ready. Schedule a consultation with us to get started.