Abstract:

Role play is an important resource for the development of the soft skills, since it allows the learners to practice the critical conversations of their role and discuss upon the outcomes of this experience. The aim of this activity is to improve performance by building confidence and self-awareness, while also generating a “deja-vu” effect in the trainee.

But one of the problems universally associated to this methodology is to be time-consuming and not easily scalable, relegating it to be a niche tool, or a resource targeted only to high-level and expensive training in most part of the world.

With this as a starting point, we developed a methodology based on simulation, where the user engages critical conversations with virtual but authentic characters, in a context specifically designed to challenge his skills and facilitate the improvement of the competences related to his role. The simulation consists in a digital role play, presented as an interactive movie made of pre-recorded clips with real actors, in which the learner plays the role of a manager handling the most common tasks related to his job. The dialogue between the user and the collaborator takes place through selection from a set of questions and answers, designed to fit the most common communication styles and possible mistakes. At the end of each meeting the system provides two kinds of pedagogical feedback: a qualitative one given directly through the collaborator’s comments during a call with a colleague, where he will share his thoughts and feelings about the last conversation, and a quantitative one, showing numerical results about general performance, self-assessment coherence, and efficacy in each phase of the discussion. The trainer (or the user) can also deep dive in a conversation already completed to analyse the choices made and the efficacy of the strategy applied, using what we have called “Augmented replay”: for each step of the conversation the user is presented with specific information about the observable behaviour associated to the sentences chosen, a description of the interlocutor's body language, and the level of engagement generated. We designed this methodology basing on the Adult Learning theories of Malcolm Knowles, proposing an experiential learning that focuses on the involvement of the trainees, exploits their existing experience, propose a problem-centered activity and works on topics who have an immediate relevance and impact for them. The scenarios presented are based on the 7 leadership styles defined by David Goleman, and the needs of the collaborators that you relate are based on the hierarchy depicted by Abraham Maslow. Compared to the classical, in-person role play, our methodology brings advantages to learners, who can experience a greater number of role play experiences, and to the trainers and coaches, who can focus on the most important elements emerged during the simulations. We named our approach “Skillgym”: like athletes that aim to achieve excellence are used to exercise before the race, learners should train their skills to meet the challenges of the daily business, and they can do it regularly with a system that, for his nature, defies the typical limitations of time and location generally associated with the role play. We believe that this methodology can dramatically improve the efficacy of the trainers, and will enable more learners to profit of the advantages of the role play practice.

Keywords:

Tutoring and Coaching, Learning and Teaching Methodologies, Blended Learning, Lifelong Learning, Next Generation Classroom, Online/Virtual Laboratories.