Background: Many of the potential benefits of using virtual worlds for teaching and learning are difficult to define and often become overly focused on the functionality of the technology or on its ability to support informal or "social" forms of learning. Purpose: The aim of the paper is to highlight the experiential nature of virtual…

This paper presents a study that used narrative inquiry to explore staff experiences of learning and teaching in immersive worlds. The findings introduced issues relating to identity play, the relationship between pedagogy and play and the ways in which learning, play and fun were managed (or not). At the same time there was a sense of imposed or…

The first author recruited parent-adolescent dyads (N = 192) into after-school prevention education groups at middle schools in southeast Texas. This author placed participants in either (1) an Interactive Program (IP) in which they role-played, practiced resistance skills, and held parent-child discussions or (2) an Attention Control Program…

An essential component of applied behavior analysis programs for teaching children with autism is discrete trials teaching. Experiment 1 investigated the effectiveness of a self-instructional manual for teaching university students to correctly apply discrete-trials teaching to teach three tasks to confederates role-playing children with autism.…

Courtroom scenes in literature seem to have a special magic with students (probably because of all the trials seen on television, fiction or non-fiction). Students in a composition and literature course at the University of Nebraska, after reading Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the D'Urbervilles," wrote "closing arguments" for either…

This paper describes the "Sickle Cell Counselor" (SCC), a goal based scenario on permanent display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. SCC is an exploratory hypermedia simulation program which provides users with a basic understanding of Sickle Cell Anemia. The user of the program plays the role of a genetic counselor, and,…

This document describes a family counseling course that incorporates role-plays as a principal component of the class and that uses undergraduate acting majors to role-play families. It notes that using these undergraduates as role-play families solves the problem of recruiting non-counselor education students and also serves as a unique training…

A study is reported that describes ways in which nonnative speakers assess, plan, and execute speech acts in certain situations. The subjects, 15 advanced English foreign-language learners, were given 6 speech act situations (two apologies, two complaints, and two requests) in which they were to role play along with a native speaker. The…

This paper describes the language training courses provided by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) to government employees and their dependents, focusing on the use of experiential language learning and "bridging" classroom study to practical applications. Bridges are an important part of the FSI training program not only because they…

Communication, especially in its non-verbal form, is essential in the interpersonal relations of students. The author describes a series of group activities using readings from You Always Communicate Something by Schwaarzroch and Wren to enhance students' non-verbal communication ability. (SE)

Fourth grade gifted students participated in group counseling in which they received relaxation training (RT) and transactional analysis (TA) while fifth grade gifted students received TA alone. Results showed that RT and TA together were more successful in reducing anxiety and improving interpersonal relations among students than TA alone. (SE)

A systematic training program in CUE: Communicating, understanding and empathy can have some significant effects on the participants. Even though the treatment in this investigation consisted of 14, 80-minute lessons, the high-school students who received the training were able to communicate empathy at a significantly higher level than their…

The purpose of this paper is to describe a simulation activity that has been effective in teaching community college students about work satisfaction. A simulated factory instigates job dissatisfaction which is then discussed in terms of cause and effect. The work is then redesigned to enhance job satisfaction and productive efficiency. (Author)

This study investigates the efficacy of symbolic modeling and role-playing therapy in the reduction of avoidance behaviors. After treatment, role-playing subjects demonstrated significantly less avoidance behavior and lower subjective fear ratings than the modeling or control group subjects. (Author/SJL)