“I had to live, breathe, and write my character”: Character Selection and Student Engagement in an Online Role-Play Simulation

ABSTRACT

This study explores the relationship between character selection and student engagement in the Jewish Court of All Time (JCAT), an online and classroom-based role-playing simulation of a current events court case with Jewish historical roots. Analyzing students’ responses to three questions posed in an out-of-character JCAT discussion forum, we tracked indications of their different types and styles of engagement and how they were associating this engagement with their character roles. The findings seek to augment the implementation of future JCAT simulations, as well as to inform research and practice of role-play simulations that involve assuming character personas.

KEYWORDS:

• Educational games
• experiential education
• role-play
• social studies
• student engagement

Acknowledgments

The authors want to thank Carrie Turpin, Jeff Stanzler, and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful feedback on drafts of this article. We would also like to thank the JCAT project directors: Deborah Skolnick Einhorn, Michael Fahy, Meredith Katz, Jeff Kupperman, Farrah Schiff, Jeff Stanzler, and Yael Steiner, for their intellectual and creative leadership, partnership, and dialogue that supported this research. Deep gratitude is owed to the Covenant Foundation for their generous support of JCAT.

Notes

¹ Previous phases of the JCAT action research studies had been under separate IRB oversight (Protocol #2013–6585).

² Any spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors have been retained from students’ original posts in order to maintain authenticity.