USING ROLE PLAY IN THE LEARNING OF DATA STRUCTURES IN A MAURITIAN SECONDARY SCHOOL

This paper describes the experiences of secondary school students in using role play as a strategy in the learning of data structures at ‘A level’ Computing and how it influenced their motivation, interest and .confidence. Role play has been used in other areas (Jackson & Back, 2011, Managheb & Mosalanejad, 2011) (Roubtsova, 2010) (Samuel & Subhashini, 2011) (Smirnova, 2011) (Williams, 2012) (Wolfe, 2009) (XU, 2011) but has been scarcely used in the teaching of topics related to Computing and Computer studies. Role play is known to enhance motivation, interest and confidence of learners. At the same time, various Computing and Computer studies topics are perceived as too complex and uninteresting by students. This study reveals the impact of role play on the motivation, interest and confidence of secondary school students when role play was used in the teaching and learning of Data Structures.

Data for this case study was obtained through observation, questionnaire, and semi-structured interviews of 12 participants, aged between 16 and 17 years old and attending a secondary school in a rural area in the Eastern part of Mauritius. Analysis of the data was carried out using a web-based qualitative data analysis tool (www.deedoose.com).

The results reveal that participants are more enthusiastic to engage in class activities. They also develop social and communication skills through group activities associated with the teaching of data structures. Role play can be a very useful strategy to teach concepts that are perceived as abstract. However, meticulous preparation is required; otherwise not all students engage equally and feel that role play is a waste of time.