Online roleplay: design for active learning

Abstract

Increasingly, professional university programmes seek to develop graduates' generic skills and capabilities and their capacity to transfer skills to new situations. Professionally-oriented study should demonstrate not only academic rigour, but also genuine relevance and value to the profession. In disciplines such as science and engineering this is represented by approaches that seek to develop technical skills and knowledge enhanced by the ability to generalize from one situation to another, to adapt behaviour to a range of contexts and to understand multiple perspectives. The Mekong E-sim is an online roleplay-simulation designed to support the development of these skills and understandings. Through it students from different disciplines work collaboratively to investigate and resolve issues related to economic development in the Mekong region of South East Asia. The Mekong E-sim facilitates active student engagement and learning and encourages high levels of distributed student interaction.

Acknowledgements

This work has been partially supported by Adelaide University using funds from a university teaching development grant. Support from the University of Technology, Sydney, and the Australian Mekong Resource Centre at the University of Sydney is also acknowledged. We would like to thank Holger Maier and Phil Hirsch who helped to develop and implement the E-sim and Kate Lloyd who contributed to the running of the E-sim.