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Exploring the potential of role play in higher education: development of a typology and teacher guidelines
Abstract
Role-play, in which learners act out roles in case scenarios, appears to be used across a broad range of discipline areas to address learning across the cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains. This paper describes the development of a prospective typology of role-play learning opportunities derived from role-play scenarios used at one large Australian university. The typology included three categories namely ‘Role-Switch’, ‘Acting’ and ‘Almost Real Life’. As an approach to using role-plays ‘Role-Switch’ as a model overtly focuses on helping students to learn from the inside out, i.e. to understand the actions of either people or things through taking on the role of being this other person or object. The ‘Acting’ model of role-play focuses on developing students practical skills through ‘acting out’ a small group scenario (e.g. patient, professional and observer) that requires the practising of a skill. In the ‘Almost Real Life’ category, students are provided with a role-playing experience, i.e. as close to the real experience as is possible. The paper also presents a collaboratively developed set of guidelines for those higher education teachers who may be considering using this active learning approach.
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“Beyond the Longevity Games, practical simulations benefit students by preparing students for practical experiences (17–19).”
From Using generative AI for interview simulations to enhance student research skills in biology education (2025) · cites this paper as [17]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Rao, D., & Stupans, I.
- Affiliations
- University of South Australia (AU)
- University of New England (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Stupans, Ieva
- Venue
- Innovations in Education and Teaching International
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2012-10-12
- Volume
- 49
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 427-436
- ISSN
- 1470-3297 (ISSN-L)
- 1470-3300
- OpenAlex
- W2091489386
- Cited by
- 172
- References
- 30
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 26 · 2021: 20 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 3 · 2013: 2
- FWCI
- 9.33
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Innovations in Education and Teaching International (publishedVersion)
- EPubDev Repository (submittedVersion)
- RMIT Research Repository (RMIT University Library) (submittedVersion)
- Adelaide Research & Scholarship (AR&S) (University of Adelaide) (submittedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion)
- RUNE (Research UNE) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Innovative Teaching Methodologies in Social Sciences
- Social Sciences › Education › Innovative Teaching Methods
- Social Sciences › Education › Problem and Project Based Learning
- Keywords
- role play, university teaching, teacher guidelines, active learning, case scenarios, acting, psychomotor learning, affective learning, skill development
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