The case may be fictional or based on an actual incident. The goal of the role playing exercise is to engage the students in the perspectives of the participants to understand their motivations, interests, and responsibilities. Through the exercise, students learn to collaborate with others to achieve wise solutions to difficult problems. Almost any case can serve as the basis for a role playing exercise during a class period.
Students read the case before the class period.
At the beginning of the class period, students volunteer for speaking roles. Each student who does not have a speaking role serves as a coach for a speaker. Each speaker caucuses with the coaches for that speaker to prepare for the role playing session. Together, the students in each group formulate questions to ask other speakers, anticipate questions from other speakers, and prepare reasonable answers. Sometimes the instructor directs a provocative question to one of the speakers.