Role-playing in eLearning: How to Reap the Maximum Benefits?

We watch children role-playing every day, rehearsing and practicing the roles they aspire to portray one day. For many years, it has been a well-established and highly effective training delivery method. But how do you include role-playing in eLearning — something that is all about online, face-to-face encounters in a corporate world?

What Is Role-playing in eLearning?

Role-playing brings storytelling to life by allowing employees to put themselves in another character’s shoes, resulting in more engaging and memorable learning in a secure atmosphere. Job-playing allows your staff members to practice realistic instances of the methods, behaviors, and decision-making abilities they’ll need — to succeed and feel confident in their chosen role. Instead of traditional classroom-based learning, realistic settings and characters provide a more interactive learning method. Role-playing, additionally, can be utilized to connect classroom knowledge to real-life simulations.

How Can You Execute Role-playing in eLearning?

You might be asking how role-playing can be done without the need for other people on the internet. Well, interactive videos are an excellent tool to bring role-playing to life. Interactive films can be meticulously crafted and assembled to offer learners the same scenario they would encounter in real-life role-playing situations.

When making role-playing videos, remember to include all of the people and locations present in a real-life scenario. Whether it’s other employees, customers, supervisors, a noisy call center, or a frantic ER, you need to ensure learners are put in the most realistic setting possible.

Allowing the learner to choose a persona or role is one technique to attain learner objectives. Given that role-playing is typically participatory, we must ensure that the learner faces some decision-making or challenging situations. This experience can be accomplished through multiple-choice questions, branching decision points that alter the course of the story, hotspots, or even the creation of a product.

Because online role-playing is now available on-demand, learners should be given the ability to switch personas so that they can quickly gauge employee and consumer needs. Allowing students to attempt again provides them the opportunity to fill up any gaps in their knowledge.

Interactions are helpful for learning and may also be utilized to provide feedback to both the student and the learning manager. Learning managers can use feedback and behavioral data to discover knowledge gaps so that they can tailor future learning, objectives, and goals. Additionally, feedback can assist learners in better understanding their choices and identifying areas for development.

Behavioral data and feedback are not readily available in traditional role-playing learning. Furthermore, large, realistic scenarios might be a significant financial burden for individuals. So, why wouldn’t you want to incorporate role-playing online into your learning strategy, given its ability to test and teach learners with practical skills?

What Learning Scenarios Demand Role-playing?

One of the most effective teaching methods is indeed role-playing. It reveals your learners’ complex personalities as they interact with the eLearning software inside their roles. However, you cannot use role-playing in any eLearning course.

So, under what circumstances may we employ role-playing in eLearning? What kinds of role-playing tactics are there?

Trainers and instructors have long utilized role-playing to replicate a workplace environment. Role-playing is frequently employed in classroom games. Enacting along tales is generally an enjoyable learning experience for students. Roles help employees to put themselves in the shoes of others and make judgments based on those roles and parameters.

Well, here are some scenarios that can hugely benefit from role-playing exercises:

• Situations in which trainers want learners to see events from a different point of view. For example, middle management could be made to think like a customer service representative or an employee could be made to think like a customer.
• Situations in which you want learners to experience experiences that aren’t achievable in a live setting but can be done online. For instance, allowing a male to experience sexual harassment in the same way that a woman does.
• Demonstrate how a project progresses from conception to completion.
• Teach students how to communicate effectively with one another.

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What Are the 3 Elements of Successful Role-playing?

1. Making Your Situations as Real as Possible

This is the key to role-playing success. While the circumstances are made up and the employees act, going through the motions with a remote isn’t enough. Assign tasks to your learners. Allow them to rehearse in front of a mirror or with a partner at home. Please give them a script and ensure they know what to do with it. Have them record it if you want the best outcomes. Nothing helps you become more self-aware than listening to (or observing) oneself.

However, keep in mind that it’s critical to have a plan when role-playing. Set goals, hit critical spots, and practice the ideal, the ordinary, and the unexpected. In a perfect world, a customer would sit back and listen to what a sales representative has to offer before responding, “Yes, please.” But this does not frequently occur in reality

2. Master the Art of Dealing With Difficult Customers

Professionals must understand that the business process isn’t always straightforward. They’ll deal with customers who have many questions and want to know everything there is to know about a product. It’s in these situations when practice pays off. Give your employees a few complex customer examples to get them to think on their feet. The more they practice dealing with complex customer types, the better prepared they will be when they encounter that type of customer.

3. Return to the Beginning                                                                              

Now that your employees have recorded themselves, it’s time to listen to them. It’s incredible how much we don’t notice until it’s right in front of us. Reviewing a role-playing session can be eye-opening and lead to significant improvement. Your learners will be able to identify their weak points and establish a plan to improve as a result of this experience.

Keep the following elements in mind to get the most out of the experience. It will assist build an employee into a force to be reckoned with:

• Change things up a bit. Create a diverse cast of people for your employees to deal with, as well as scenarios in which they must adjust to changing demands.
• Allow for mistakes. When your learners take a bad turn, don’t stop them. When we make a mistake and have to figure out how to rectify it, we often learn the most.
• Make a positive contribution. Keep your comments brief and to the point. If your employee is overwhelmed or frustrated by the comments you provide, this exercise will be worthless.

What Are Some Examples of Role-playing in Corporate Training?

1. Criticism of Behavior

You can teach learners desirable behavior in a situation through this type of role-playing activity. The eLearning application would act as a role model for inappropriate behavior, allowing learners to see the flaws. One learner can model negative behavior while their peers react.

2. What is My Role in the Company?

Learners are needed to choose a well-known person in their area and make a speech while pretending to be them, based on a popular game. Their speeches are posted on the discussion board. Peers will comment on each other’s remarks and try to figure out who is who. Learners are better equipped to comprehend and relate to the subject and its context in this manner.

3. Murder Mystery

You can use a murder-solving role-playing game to teach investigative and fact-finding skills. Learners are needed to examine a scenario with characters described in full. Each student is assigned a role. They must solve the riddle using the facts they have about their characters.

Other types of investigative role-playing include treasure hunting, determining the reason for an accident or crash, finding a cure or antidote for an illness, or locating a missing person.

4. Court Trial

This one is a lot of fun! Put a student, a person, a historical figure, or a company on trial. Assign roles to your students, such as judge, accused, jury, and victim, for example.

5. Board Meeting

This method is often used in corporate training. Hold a simulated board meeting with CEOs, presidents, and key stakeholders. Each character is given a thorough description. Their interpersonal relationships are also outlined. A schedule is provided, as well as a time limit. Everyone speaks per their assigned job.

Real-life Examples of Role-playing in eLearning

To empower learners with customer service training, integrate simulations, peer learning, social learning, and scenarios. Their ‘e-Roleplay’ connects learners via a desktop interface to allow them to practice customer service discussions.

One employee poses as the customer and gives information about who they are and why they are calling. They are provided suggestions on what they could say while also monitoring their partner’s development. On the other side, their partner has only the virtual desktop and must converse with the ‘client’ most appropriately to obtain the most significant result.

Customers can assess their partners on soft skills, time management, data entry, and screen navigation to make sure that learners and trainers are aware of any knowledge gaps. Overall, a practical and efficient method of training customer support representatives in a secure setting.

1. The University of London

This institute uses online role-playing as part of its midwifery program, despite the fact that most people would think that a face-to-face method would be preferable. Through online, low-cost, interactive, simulated training, they intended to guarantee that learners had a thorough awareness of the ethics underlying the maternity service.

The course combined online and face-to-face instruction to enable learners to make autonomous clinical judgments as a midwife while also understanding what it was like to be in the shoes of service consumers. Learners had to deal with tensions while going through multiple midwifery appointments in order to foster reflection on how experiences might affect both the midwife and the service user.

The module leader was able to keep track of the decisions taken, which proved useful in face-to-face instruction and discussion groups. This subject is an excellent example of when both traditional and online instruction are required.

However, this demonstrates the value of online role-playing as a tool to provide a high level of learning and real-life experiences prior to qualified practice.

2. HostileWorld

This is an online role-playing learning platform for assistance workers working in high-risk areas. It provides courses for practicing behaviors, protocols, and security concerns. HostileWorld, which is based on the well-known idea of ‘Hostile Environment Awareness Training,’ or ‘HEAT,’ provides a more cost-effective and flexible way for learners to encounter the same kind of choices that they would face in face-to-face exercises.

Learners are required to make rapid judgments using the unique Near-LifeTM technology, much as they would in the field. Because of the technology, students can engage in immersive role-playing learning through a unique film technique that uses actual characters and settings.

As learners make decisions, the learning unfolds, demonstrating how quickly things may change in real life. In addition, the courses include behavioral data, allowing both the learner and the learning manager to evaluate progress and feedback.

HostileWorld has given online role-playing a whole new meaning by providing learners with realistic and relevant scenarios.

Rounding it Up: Is Online Role-Playing Learning the Way to Go?

While the benefits of role-playing are well known, role-playing in eLearning is still a new concept. Role-playing online, on the other hand, has the potential to immerse learners through video, guaranteeing that their experience is as realistic as possible, thanks to modern technology and learning methodologies. Aside from the financial savings, making role-playing digital makes it easier to track and analyse progress and comments. One can also replicate learning can also in a manner that traditional role-playing does not always permit.

In eLearning, role-playing can increase engagement and knowledge retention, and it is now a viable option for learning providers. Traditional, static content does not provide learners with an interesting, realistic, or immersive experience.

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