Summary of Findings (Green Team): Role Playing (4.5 out of 5 Stars)

Note: This post represents the synthesis of the thoughts, procedures and experiences of others as represented in the 12 articles read in advance (see previous posts) and the discussion among the students and instructor during the Advanced Analytic Techniques class at Mercyhurst College in March 2012 regarding Role Playing specifically. This technique was evaluated based on its overall validity, simplicity, flexibility, its ability to effectively use unstructured data and its ease of communication to a decision maker.

Description:
A technique where participants are given specific roles to follow in an exercise that depicts opposing perspectives of a given scenario.The goal of using role playing as a method is to take different standpoints in order to acknowledge new perspectives as well as minimize biases for forecasting. It can be used as a modifier in order to facilitate training and education. It may successfully forecast outcomes in some scenarios. The military, law, and business claim successful uses of role playing.

Strengths:

• Works in a number of different disciplines
• Helps in active learning in a controlled environment
• Helps users to perceive and acknowledge different points of view
• Provides an insight to understand behavioral patters of others
• Can be cost efficient tool for forecasting, training, and analysis
• Can be used in modeling and resolution of conflict situations

Weaknesses:

• Time consuming to prepare
• Highly dependent on the level of preparation
• Difficult to evaluate effectiveness
• Outcomes vary with the role players
• It is almost impossible to account for all factors in role playing than a real scenario

How-to:

• Begin by defining the objectives of the role-playing exercise
• Define participant roles and setting
• Assign each individual their own role to fulfill in the group setting
• Assign the setting to the entire group
• Enact the scene with time limits that encourage interactions, discussions, and conflicts which could develop given the specific setting.
• After the discussion, the group should discuss the results of the role-play, and possible findings from the experience.

Personal Application of Technique:
We performed a brief scenario of an oil company versus an environmental group on the topic of new drilling. Each group found a consensus on what arguments would most effectively argue their side. Then, we estimated what the other side would counter argue. In the exercise, the oil company group created three arguments, of which the environmental group accurately forecasted two of the arguments. On the other side, the oil company group accurately forecasted all points raised by the environmental group.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Role-Play Technique as an Innovative Training Technique

In this article, the author discusses the use of role-playing as a training and development technique for employees in organizations. According to the author, role play as a training technique serves as a multi –skill developing weapon where the trainee not only develops a broader perspective about the task or new role but also the horizon of understanding others behavior resulting into empathy, team work, better communication, interpersonal skills and management development takes place. The method helps in developing both cognitive and affective component of perception and helps in knowing how people behave and why people behave in different ways. The technique also focuses on emotional, behavioral and perceptual basis for development.

The author listed the following objectives of role playing as a training technique:

1. Help develop a better understanding of the job
2. Understand how to handle a particular situation
3. Develop a better understanding of the issues for better decision making
4. Help in developing communication, management development and leadership quality
5. Help improve the interpersonal skills
6. Help provide an insight to understand behavioral patterns of others

The success of this technique depends on the role brief, set circumstances, and the utility expected from the technique. Benefits or outcome of role play as a training technique are:

1. It helps in both cognitive and effective development of trainees, and better learning by doing.
2. It permits practice by repetition and helps in better reinforcement
3. It also helps in improving human relation since it helps I developing empathy
4. It helps in making people sensitive towards others
5. It helps in better SWOT analysis of individuals and thus the feedback given helps in identifying and overcoming the deficiencies.
6. It enables the role player to control his behavior and enact as if he is enacting in a real life situation
7. It helps in bringing attitudinal changes in the employees as trainees
8. It is a more practical approach than other technique since in this the learning by doing and feedback that whether a behavior reflected is acceptable or requires change can be given.

Before selecting this technique for training, it is essential that the organization identify the objectives, experience of the trainee, and the issue or task at hand. The goal should be with maximum involvement of individuals as participants so that an overall exposure and understanding of attitude, skills, knowledge, behavior, expectation, need for improvement, emotional stability, and required competencies can be identified. 

Source:

Chaturvedi, V. (2009) Role – Play: An innovative training technique.

http://www.indianmba.com/Faculty_Column/FC896/fc896.html

Skills Development using role-play

Introduction:
In the article, Deepa Rao discusses the usefulness of role-play in developing first-year pharmacy students’ patient-care skills.  Rao believes that desired learning outcomes can be achieved if learning activities focus on engaging students by providing opportunities and support for the students to build on their knowledge, actively participate, self-critique, and practice. The author writes that role-play can be a useful tool in developing essential skills, including communication, information-gathering, making assessments and recommendations, and counseling.

Summary:
The author describes a role-play model that was developed and implemented in workshops across two semesters of a year long pharmaceutical course at an Australian University.  In the role-play students performed different roles, including a pharmacist and a patient and documented the results of each interaction.  

The role-play was constructed as a category role-switch exercise.  The exercise will help the students to understand a concept by taking on the role of another person or entity.  The role-play exercise focuses on developing and practicing skills through acting out predetermined scenarios, with the goal of providing the student an almost real life experience that is as realistic as possible.  The exercise allowed for multiple tasks to be undertaken in a single interaction, allowing for the simultaneous development of several skills.

The goals for the the role-play exercise was derived from the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia’s Professional Practice Standards and Competency Standards.  The goals included:

• Developing effective communication skills, including active listening skills.
• Accurately gather patient history using a structured process
• Apply knowledge about medications to make appropriate recommendations
• Accurately document patient interaction
• Develop professional attitude

The students were surveyed at the completion of the role play exercise.  It was found that the role-play exercise improved the students abilities to:

• Effectively communicate and frame appropriate questions
• Gather patient history
• Develop professional attitudes

The students did not show an improvement in their ability to accurately document patient interaction.  

Overall, the students believed that the exercise helped them develop core competencies in pharmacy practice.  Suggestions for improving the role-play exercise included increasing the number of cases from the 10 that were run, include a wider variety of cases, and have smaller group sizes.  

Conclusion:
This article demonstrates how role play can be used to engage students to actively teach and be sensitive to another’s position.  The techniques used in this article can be applied to the intelligence field.  Role play exercises can be constructed to teach intelligence analysts and engage them in considering the positions and motivations of others.  If role play exercises are properly constructed and executed it could allow an analyst to properly assess a given situation and reach a conclusion to anticipate an outcome.  

Source:
Rao, D. (2011). Skills development using role-play in a first-year pharmacy practice course. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 75(5), pp 1-10.

Behavioral Respnse to Phishing Risk

Summary:
Julie S. Downs, Mandy Holbrook, and Lorrie F. Cranor conducted a survey exploring what factors are associated with falling for phishing attacks using a role-playing exercise. The study found that knowledge and experience predict behavioral responses to phishing attacks in ways that support the idea that better understanding can help to minimize or eliminate such attacks.

Description:
Members of the Carnegie Mellon community were asked to participate in an online survey. A role-playing email was answered by 232 participants. The email contained images of emails and web sites, a URL evaluation section where respondents identified features of URLs, a section asking how respondents would react to different warning messages, a knowledge section where respondents interpreted the meaning of lock icons and jargo words, past experience with web sites, and ratings of potential negative consequences of phishing. During the email role play, participants were asked to view five emails as if they were 'Pat Jones' who works at Cognix. The emails contained the following features:

Predictive Ability:
Overall rates at which respondents fell for the phishing scams did not represent meaningful data about their bahavior, as they were driven by the content of the stimuli used rather than random phishing emails. The participants who correctly answered the knowledge question about the definition of phishing were significantly less likely to fall for phishing emails. However, knowledge about other computer risks and concepts were unrelated to clicking on the phishing link, whether about cookies, spyware, or viruses. Similar correlations were found with the images of the lock icon.

Results:
The role-play exercise appeared to be a reliable measure of behavioral response to phishing attacks. Understanding what phishing attacks are and the ability to understand URL links accounts for decreasing the likelihood of falling for phishing scams. This suggests that education about how to interpret cues in browsers may have a role in helping people to avoid phishing attacks. The findings can be used to influence anti-phishing education. Additionally, developers of anti-phishing tools for end users can use insights into the behaviors in the design of more effective user interface messages that users will be less likely to ignore.

Limitations:
The sample was derived of members of a specific community, so the results can not be effectively extrapolated to the population at large. A second limitation is that the small set of stimuli were used. A third limitation is the lack of direct consequences for behavior. Participants may have been more willing to engage in risk behavior in the role play since they are immune to any negative outcomes.

Source:
Downs, Julie S.; Holbrook, Mady; and Cranor, Lorrie F., "Behavioral Response to Phishing Risk" (2007). Institute for Software Research. Paper 35. http://repository.cmu.edu/isr/35

DECISIONS, DECISIONS! A Genetics Role-playing Activity

Role Playing

Summary:
Sharon Nelson of Waunakee High School in Wisconsin published a role playing scenario she used for her high school students. The scenario is about the "3 P's of science", as Nelson writes; "problem posing, problem solving, and peer persuasion." She briefly discusses the purpose of the role play, and the procedure in which to do it.
In the procedure she says "students will be assigned to work in groups of 2-5, at the instructor's discretion. Students will then choose a scenario for role playing. Their job is to research any and all information pertinent to their situation. Students may divide the roles in any way they see fit (one may choose to assume the role of parent, another the role of doctor, etc.) Once they have the necessary information, they must make some decisions regarding their situation, based on the bioethical issues involved. In addition to a 5-10 minute oral presentation, students must, with their group members, turn in one written report."

She then lists the possible scenarios the students can choose from. All the scenarios are relatively short and to the point. An example of one is...
You have hemophilia; you and your spouse would like to have children. You are referred to a genetic counselor.
Income: You just lost your job due to missing so many days of work for hospital stays. Wife's income as teacher's aide: $18,000.
Insurance: none

Weaknesses:
Very lengthy on preparation

Link
http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/ATG/data/released/0350-SharonNelson/index.php

On The Move With A Magic Thing: Role Playing In Concept Design Of Mobile Services And Devices

This study, conducted in 2000, evaluated the success of using role playing to design a mobile network for the campus of Helsinki University of Technology to investigate the nomadic Internet use of the future. The design team hoped to overcome three main difficulties of their task through role playing. The design team was planning for the use of a technology that did not exist at the time, so it was hard to know how it would be used. They needed a design that allowed for mobility, and they had to incorporate their users' lifestyles and cultures into their plan for the technology.

The designers used two methods of role playing. One of these is called participatory design technique, in which the designers asked a sample of their target audience to enact daily situations imagining using a technology in a variety of campus settings and while playing either themselves or different roles. They utilized props to make the situation seem more realistic. In contrast, the second type of role playing, referred to as Situated and Participative Enactment of Scenarios (SPES) had people carry a mock up of the anticipated product in their hand with them through their daily activities and imagine how they might use the product. A trained observer recorded the participant's thoughts. The study revealed the following strengths of role playing in general.

Strengths:

• Engages users in a common cause
• Good way to investigate the consequences of decisions or designs with little risk or cost
• Captures cultural aspects well in designs and decisions

Results:

The study also made it clear that the participatory design technique in which people acted out fictional situations was better suited to designing services involving group interaction and dynamic incidents. In contrast, SPES was more useful for considering less dynamic activities such as listening to music, and it helped give designers a more detailed scenario because the recorder noted the context of a user's actions.

Source:

http://www.cs.hut.fi/~pmrg/publications/GO-PROD/2000/Lacucci_Kuutti_Ranta_OMMT.pdf

Problem Solving and Conflict Resolution Role Playing

The article describes the use of role playing to come up with constructive solutions to conflict and problems in a classroom setting. The technique entails assigning people to act out a conflict scenario in order to come up with the best solution to a problem. Role playing is often used in education to improve children's interpersonal skills and ability to handle difficult social situations. It is versatile and has applications for solving problems as simple as playground bullying to those as complex as international tensions.

Strengths:

• The activity simulates the emotions of an actual event which engages participants in the process.
• The fictitious nature of the interaction reduces the psychological stress of a situation which allows shyer people to participate more fully than they might feel free to do in real life.
• Encourages creative solutions.
• Increases insight into another person's point of view.

Weaknesses:

• It is not a fruitful exercise unless the participants take it seriously.

How to:

1. Discuss the problem to be portrayed.
2. Make sure that the participants are committed to the process.
3. Assign roles.
4. Act out the situation, responding spontaneously.
5. Evaluate the actions of each player.
6. Repeat, taking different courses of action if needed.

Source:

http://www.classroomsthatwork.com/pdf/Roll%20Playing.pdf

Team Role Play

Role Playing

Summary:
The author of this article on Team Role Playing, Jeffrey Baumgartner, writes that role playing "is when a group of people act out roles for a particular scenario." He goes on to describe a simple role playing scenario about a salesman and a customer. In essence, the two sales trainees play the two roles. Baumgartner mentions that other people may watch the scenario in order to better understand also.

The article continues with Baumgartner's scenario of salesman and customer being put to groups of trainees. There are specific rules that are laid out before each group and eventually each group must make a decision about how to best "play out" the scenario. The author mentions that when a team member is trying to help the "actor" that it should not be discouraged because it could possibly lead to better solutions. He sums up his discussion about his scenario by showing how each scenario can become more and more complex by adding more specifics, forcing the "actors" to think more about how to reach the best outcome for their team.

Strengths:

• Analyzes problems from various perspectives

• Implements brainstorming methodology in simulations of real cases

• Tries various solutions in a case scenario

• dDevelops team-work, co-operation and creative problem solving in groups

• Exercises creative techniques in a risk-free environment

Link:
http://www.jpb.com/creative/roleplay.php

The "Red Team": Forging A Well-Conceived Contigency Plan

By Col. Timothy G. Malone and Maj. Reagan E. Schaupp
Aerospace Power Journal
Summer, 2002

Author's Note: Due to the article's length, only the most relevant information for our class was summarized.

Summary
Throughout the article, the authors provide two separate definitions for red teaming. Although the definitions are similar, they are also different (which is somewhat puzzling). I synthesized the two definitions and came up with this: a red team is a group of subject-matter experts with appropriate backgrounds that provide an independent review of processes and products using devil’s advocacy and knowledgeable role-playing of the enemy. The red team assesses planning decisions, assumptions, and courses of action from the perspective of friendly and enemy organizations.

The authors acknowledge that the concept of red teaming is far from new. Government, military, and civilian circles have all used red teaming in a variety of contexts. In government circles, it normally is associated with assessing the vulnerabilities of systems or structures, especially within the warfare arena. In the business world, red teaming usually refers to a peer review of a concept or proposal.

If conducted effectively, red teaming can produce more complete analysis at all phases and deliver a better plan of operations for the decision-maker. Effective red teams can pinpoint planning shortfalls, deviations from doctrine, reveal overlooked opportunities, and extrapolate unanticipated strategic implications. Additionally, red teaming can also determine whether the required task is understood or whether further guidance is needed.

Because a red team will conduct a comprehensive review planning products and processes, the selection of team members is critical. Red team members must have credibility, which comes only with expertise and experience. If some red team members blatantly fall short of this prerequisite, their counterparts will be skeptical of any insights they claim to have about the operation. The timing of red teaming events can play a crucial role in planning success. Ideally, the commander should form a red team as early in the planning effort as possible.