Role-Playing in the Classroom: a tourism experience

Fiona E. Richards

Abstract

This paper focuses on a role-play exercise incorporated into a first year tourism subject within the B.Admin (Tourism) degree at James Cook University.  The semester long exercise was designed to be carried out during the tutorial / practical component of the subject.  The program aimed to teach students not only the fundamentals of the Australian Tourism Product, but also generic skills in areas of written and oral communications, logical and analytical thinking, research, and teamwork.

Students were presented with the scenario in which funds were made available through a central body and for which each state or territory tourism authority could bid in relation to a special project. Students worked in groups and developed a tourism marketing or development project for their allocated state.  Funding documents were prepared instead of traditional academic reports, and each group made an oral presentation of their funding bid to the rest of the class.

The role-play exercise was designed in four stages: stage one introduced the class to concepts such as working in groups, teambuilding and written and oral presentation skills; stage two comprised the group work and idea development component of the projects; stage three saw the students presenting their projects, and; stage four included an evaluation of the subject design.

Introduction

This paper focuses on a role-play exercise incorporated into a first year tourism subject within the B.Admin (Tourism) degree at James Cook University.  The semester long exercise was designed to be carried out during the tutorial / practical component of the subject.   The program aimed to teach students not only the fundamentals of the Australian Tourism Product, but also generic skills in areas of written and oral communications, logical and analytical thinking, research, and teamwork.

Tourism is a dynamic and industry based specialism, global in nature and real world oriented.  This area of study often crosses over numerous subject areas, and even departments, within the university structure often making it difficult to teach in a traditional classroom manner. An understanding of this interdisciplinary nature of tourism, as a subject matter and as an industry, is essential in the development of tourism scholars (Teaff & Hobson, 1991; Pearce, 1993; Ritchie, 1993). Other studies have indicated that students encountering a more exciting active rather than passive role in their learning environment experienced increased retention (Astin, 1985; Van Rossum, 1988; Ineson, 1991). Another important consideration in the design of tourism curricula is the need of tourism educators to recognise the short-term employment needs of industry and match these with graduate outcomes. The meeting of industry needs to be synthesised with the preparation of students for long-term success in their careers (Ritchie, 1993). The nature of tourism therefore lends itself to, and some would say requires, innovative, flexible and creative methods of curricula delivery.

To facilitate active learning and explain the interdisciplinary nature of tourism, case studies and practical exercises have proven to be effective tools for drawing together individual threads of a subject or topic. Cooper, Shepherd, and Westlake (1996), stated that “when elements of the body of knowledge are separated out for teaching purposes, there is a danger that the overview or the ‘big picture’, is sacrificed.” To be effective, much planning must be undertaken in the design and implementation of the case study method.  According to Cooper et al.  (1996, p.168), case studies must be:

If such guidelines are followed, case studies can prove to be an effective method of delivery, or alternatively they may be used as a creative and flexible form of assessment.

Case studies can be taken to a higher level of activity on the part of the student by introducing the concept of simulation or role-playing.  Pearce (1993) describes tourism education as, “a soft, unrestricted, applied, pre-pragmatic, rural and content based specialism, with a concrete, reflective learning style”.  The reflective learning style of tourism refers to the fact that unlike many disciplines such as science, students of tourism are unable to learn through the experience of experimenting in a laboratory setting.

“Tourism students are not active experimenters, they do not manipulate the industry and are therefore best characterised as learning in a reflective mode” (Pearce, 1993).

Role-playing allows the tourism classroom to be transformed, at least to some extent, into an industry laboratory in which students can experiment with given industry related problems. Role-playing also facilitates the learning of a series of core generic skills, which are becoming increasingly important not only in tourism, but across the broad spectrum of academic disciplines.  Such generic skills include the understanding of processes, the development of attitudes and the concept of problem solving.  In addition, the flexibility of role-playing allows for additional generic skills such as teamwork and communication to be taught in the process (Dekkers & Donatti, 1974; Ray, 1981; Ineson, 1991; McCann, 1996).

A Tourism Role-Play – The Scenario

As the practical component for the first year tourism subject, the Australian Tourism Product, students were presented with a role-playing exercise, in which they were expected to work in groups, simulating a work group within a state tourism organisation.  Within these groups, students were to develop a tourism marketing or development project for their allocated state. Students were told that the Federal Government had committed $500,000 to the Australian Tourist Commission to develop and promote special interest, or niche tourism, within Australia.  These funds were to be allocated to the states competitively.  The following were also presented as general guidelines for the funding:

The Role-Play Process

The role play exercise was designed in four stages: stage one introduced the class to concepts such as working in groups, teambuilding and written and oral presentation skills; stage two comprised the group work and idea development component of the projects; stage three saw the students presenting their projects, and; stage four included an evaluation of the subject design.

Stage One: This section of the exercise ran over a four-week period and was designed to introduce students to some of the concepts and skills needed to successfully complete the assessment task.  A series of tutorials were given covering topics such as group dynamics, teambuilding, conflict resolution, idea development and written and oral communication skills.  The details of the role-play were also discussed, with a detailed handout provided to each student to ensure a clear understanding of the task at hand.

Stage Two: After forming into self selected groups, stage two of the role-play process commenced.  It was during this stage that students formulated their project ideas within their groups, using techniques learnt during tutorials, such as brainstorming.  Students were expected to prepare a funding document following the guidelines presented in the assessment handout. 

Stage Three: This stage of the role-play involved the students presenting their projects orally to the class.  These presentations were designed to simulate an industry presentation to a funding committee, who would be assessing their funding bid and the merit of their proposed project.

Stage Four: At the end of semester, once all projects had been presented in both oral and written form, a review of the subject, and in particular the practical component, was conducted.  Students were asked to complete a self-administered questionnaire that examined various aspects of the subject.  Students were asked to rate their satisfaction with aspects of the practical component and their perceived improvement or progress regarding a series of skills / attributes.  Three open-ended questions were also included to gain student feedback on the best features of the subject, the worst features of the subject, and any suggested changes or improvements to the subject.

The Assessment

Cooper, Shepherd, and Westlake (1996), propose that within tourism and hospitality studies, the assessment method selected should ensure that the student develops;

Bush-Bacelis (1998), believed that assessment should encourage students to be flexible, work well in teams, solve problems, and think creatively, as these skills are all needed in the workplace. Assessment for the practical component of TO1002 was designed to ensure the linking of the basic fundamentals of the subject with more abstract and conceptual ideas relating to the Australian tourism industry.  It was important that the assessment was industry relevant and facilitated students adapting knowledge learnt in lectures, to new situations.  Generic skills in the areas of oral and written communication, and a student’s capacity for critical and analytical thinking, were also examined.

Assessment for the role-play comprised of a written funding proposal and an oral presentation of the funding proposal. Funding proposals were prepared instead of traditional academic reports in order to encourage industry relevance.  In the proposal, students were to delineate the nature of the project they proposed to develop in order to promote special interest tourism within their state and increase visitor numbers.  How they plan to accomplish the project, timelines, budgets and resources needed to accomplish the tasks were also to be reported.

Students were required to give the class a brief oral presentation of the proposal, sharing their reasons for selecting the project and the details included in the written proposal.  Although presenting to the lecturer and class, the make-believe audience for the presentation was the funding body.  All group members were required to present, and creativity in the use of visual aids was encouraged. 

Findings of the Review

A total of 37 responses were obtained from a population of 61 students enrolled in TO1002.  Questionnaires were distributed during practicals in the last week of semester, a week in which attendance was low.

Student Satisfaction

Students were asked to rate their satisfaction with certain elements of the practical component of the subject.  A five point Likert rating scale was employed to measure this satisfaction with 1 indicating least satisfaction, and 5 indicating most satisfaction.  Table 1 displays these results. The overall satisfaction mean was relatively high with a mean of 4.05, indicating that students were generally satisfied with the practical component of TO1002. Breaking down the overall satisfaction rating into the seven specific categories examined, the element achieving the highest satisfaction mean, related to the subject’s industry relevance (mean = 4.44).  This was a pleasing result as achieving increase industry relevance was one of the main aims in redesigning the practical component. Although rated somewhat satisfied to satisfied (mean = 3.46), the preparation tutorials before the commencement of the project had the lowest satisfaction rating.

Subject Aspects	Mean (SD)
Preparation tutorials before commencing the project	3.46 (0.73)
Project group size	4.27 (0.84)
Level of challenge of work	4.11 (0.61)
Overall demands of the project	3.84 (0.65)
Scope for individual involvement	3.95 (1.05)
Interest in the project	4.16 (0.93)
Industry relevance	4.44 (0.69)
Overall Mean	4.05 (0.47)

 Table 1: Satisfaction with aspects of the subject  Note:  5=most satisfied, 4= satisfied, 3= somewhat satisfied, 2= not very satisfied, 1= least satisfied

Skill Development

As one of the major aims of the role-play was to develop a series of generic skills, students were asked to assess how much progress or improvement they felt they had achieved in certain areas.  Students were asked to rate their improvement using a five-point Likert rating scale, 1 indicating no improvement, and 5 indicating substantial improvement. Although it should be noted that these results only indicate students’ perceived skill improvement, the overall improvement mean of 3.80 (S.D = 0.69) was an encouraging result. It was assuring that students indicated improvement in the areas of working to, and meeting deadlines (mean=4.00), use of initiative (mean=3.89), group problem solving skills (mean = 3.81), and planning and decision-making (mean = 3.92). The area that received the lowest mean improvement rating was the monitoring of group progress (mean = 3.55). A summary of the results is shown in Table 2.

Perceptions	Mean (SD)
Processing of information	3.56 (0.76)
Oral presentation	3.78 (0.95)
Analysis of information	3.53 (0.84)
Oral communication	3.78 (0.75)
Collection of information	3.67 (0.94)
Written presentation	3.68 (0.82)
Written communication	3.62 (0.86)
Group problem solving skills	3.81 (0.78)
Organisation of group	3.68 (0.91)
Planning and decision making	3.92 (0.68)
Working to, and meeting deadlines	4.00 (0.75)
Use of initiative	3.89 (0.91)
Monitoring progress of group	3.35 (0.75)
Tolerance of others in group	3.66 (0.88)
Self-organisation	3.58 (0.81)
Self-motivation	3.89 (0.81)
Confidence in project work	3.89 (0.97)
Overall Mean	3.84 (0.69)

 Table 2:  Student perception of progress / improvement of skills / attributes. Note:  5= substantial improvement, 4= improvement, 3= some improvement, 2= not much improvement, 1= no improvement

Open-Ended Questions

Three open-ended questions were included in the questionnaire to gain feedback that would to facilitate future subject improvements. A wide variety of positive comments were received and the majority of responses were categorised into five themes.  These themes were the funding document, the presentation, the project, learning about the Australian tourism industry, and group work. The most frequent comments relating to the worst features of the subject were associated with the lectures and the timing of the presentations. Not surprisingly these areas were also the main themes presented in relation to suggested changes to the subject.

Improvements and Changes

Using student feedback and teaching staff observations throughout the subject, a series of changes have been made to the subject design. Although this paper has focused on the practical component of the subject, the lecture component featured frequently in changes suggested by the students.  Following this lead, lectures have been redesigned away from a state-by-state perspective to a themed approach.  It is hoped that these changes will remove much of the monotony and repetitiveness picked up by students. In relation to the role-playing exercise in the practical component of the subject, more introductory or preparatory sessions have been incorporated to focus on the generic skill component of the subject outcomes.  Adopting these additional sessions will also facilitate the rescheduling of presentations, so that all groups present over a two-week period, thus improving equity. To aid in the improvement of group monitoring of progress skills, a series of supervised group sessions will also be incorporated into the timetable.

Conclusion

It must be noted that much of the data collected were students’ perceptions of their performance and skill development, and not a measurement of students’ actual improvement in these areas. Taking this into account, it is encouraging to find that students felt a positive improvement toward the majority of the subject outcomes promoted, coupled with a high level of overall satisfaction and industry relevance. The introduction of role-playing into tourism curricula may thus constitute an effective method for delivery and assessment that will overcome some of the challenges relating to teaching tourism in a classroom setting.

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