Social skills deficits and excesses are a defining aspect of mental retardation (MR). Research indicates that there is an established relationship between social skills and maladaptive behaviors. A number of studies demonstrate that the social competence of individuals with MR and comorbid psychopathology can be enhanced with social skills…

Using role play and verbal-report data, this study investigates the sequential organization of politeness strategies of 24 learners of Spanish and whether the learners' ability to negotiate and mitigate a refusal was influenced by length of residence in the target community. Refusal sequences were examined throughout the interaction head acts,…

Evaluation professionals can benefit from practice in the same way that lawyers, doctors, and other professionals improve their performance through practice. The case method enables practice through role plays and situational analyses. Cases provide openings for evaluators and program planners to experiment with new norms of communication…

The authors conducted an experiment with a group of military officers and replicated it with a group of students at a public university in the United States. The experimental scenario dealt with a decision problem in the area of counterterrorism. The authors found that while more than one-third of students recommended doing nothing, the…

The rapid acceleration of online course offerings presents a design challenge for instructors who want to take materials developed for face-to-face settings and adapt them for asynchronous online usage. Broadcast lectures are relatively easy to transfer, but adapting content is harder when classes use small-group discussions, as in role-playing or…

The classroom practices discussed in "Effective Second Language Writing" reflect various trends and methodologies; however, the underlying theme in this volume of the Classroom Practice Series is the need for clear and meaningful communication between ESL writers and their readers. While approaches differ, two core beliefs are constant: ESL…

Conference proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference on the Teaching of Psychology: Ideas and Innovations, sponsored by the Psychology Department of the State University of New York at Farmingdale. The conference theme for 2010 was Fostering, Assessing, and Sustaining Student Engagement. The conference featured two keynote addresses from prominent…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on a study into how a three-dimensional (3D) virtual world (Second Life) can facilitate socialisation and team working among students working on a team project at a distance. This models the situation in many commercial sectors where work is increasingly being conducted across time zones and between…

In this paper the online construction of disability is investigated and the implications for educators working in virtual worlds are considered. Based on the analysis of data collected through interviews with deaf residents of "Second Life", it is argued that research into online identity, disability and education needs to allow room for…

Like any infrastructure technology, Virtual World (VW) platforms provide affordances that facilitate some activities and hinder others. Although it is theoretically possible for a VW platform to support all types of activities, designers make choices that lead technologies to be more or less suited for different learning objectives. Virtual World…

This paper identifies some of the pedagogical benefits of an active learning course delivery complemented by an online discussion forum to teach sustainability by evaluating the case of a geography master's course. The potential benefits and some challenges of an active learning course delivery to teach sustainability in geography and related…

Postsecondary educators preparing future clinicians and teachers have an important responsibility to develop cultural competence of their students in order to meet the increasing and ever-changing demands of today's global workforce and diverse workplace. In this article, the authors discuss key components to developing cultural intelligence.…

The ways in which role playing and simulation can assist students to clarify their values and to develop more adequate values is described. (DE)

Views the tendency of actors to take on the attitudes of the characters they play as an example of dissonance reduction and investigates dissonance arousal and retardation in terms of the actor and his perception of his performance. (MH)

This article studied the relative and combined effectiveness of role playing and monetary incentives to increase the social interaction and responsiveness of chronic male psychiatric patients. Trend analyses of ward data and experimental findings consistently indicated significant positive changes at posttreatment for only those groups receiving…