Role Play
It is a technique in which some difficulty - real or imaginary - involving human interaction exists and then spontaneously acted out. Participants can assume the roles of particular organisational members in a given situation and then act their roles. For instance, a trainee may be asked to play the role of a supervisor who is needed to discipline worker smoking in the plant in violation of the rules. Another candidate would assume the role of the worker. Then the particular playing the supervisory role would proceed to take whatever action he deems suitable. Then this action provides the basis for conversation and comments by the groups.
Role play builds up interpersonal skills amongst participants. They learn by doing things. Instant feedback helps those correct mistakes, change, switch gears hats & reorient their focus in a right way. The competitive atmosphere encourage them to contribute actively, listen to what others say, analyse and observe behavioural responses and develop their own performance by putting their textual learning to test.
On the negative side, in role-playing realism is sometimes lacking, so the learning experience is not good. It is not simple to duplicate the pressures and realities of real decision-making on the job; and individuals, frequently act in a different way in actual- life situations than they do in acting out a simulated exercise. Several trainees are frequently uncomfortable in role-playing situations, and trainers have to introduce the situations well so that learning may take place. To this end, trainers should do following :
- Make sure that members of the group are comfortable with each other
- choose and prepare the role players by introducing a particular situation
- help participants prepare; ask them to organize potential characters
- understand that volunteers make better role players
- prepare observers by giving them particular tasks (for example, evaluation, feedback)
- guide role play enactment over its bumps (As it is not scripted)
- keep it short
- explain the enactment and prepare bulleted points of what was learned