Making role-playing real

Developing skills students need

McGuire (2002) asserts that public administration today happens in a network context. He notes several behavioral actions of managers that are critical to meet the demands of the networked age of public administration, including: activation – identifying and convening the resources needed to achieve the goals of a program; framing – creating a structure and rules that allow for horizontal governance; mobilizing – developing support among stakeholders for a programs purpose and mission; synthesizing – building relationships among stakeholders through repeated positive interactions; and facilitating – the sharing of information and ideas to support the mission of the agency. Bingham et al. (2005) suggest that in addition to networked governance, horizontal relationships among governing agencies, there is a need for increased citizen integration into governance, including deliberative democracy practices such as participatory budgeting, citizen juries and alternative dispute resolution. The authors state: “Schools of public administration and public affairs owe it to future public managers and administrators to provide better training in these processes” (Bingham et al., 2005: 555). Specifically, the authors note that students need skills including, “… convening, conflict assessment, negotiation, active listening and reframing, facilitation, and consensus building” (Bingham et al., 2005: 547).

A class in the strategic management of public organizations may be an especially apt space for developing these skill sets. The strategic management of public organizations, as explained by Moore (1995) is about identifying the purpose, mission and goals of an agency and identifying how best to achieve that mission. My approach to this course has always been to help students understand multiple methods to acquire information about the environment a public organization operates in to inform the strategic planning process and the strategic management of a public organization. While we explore theoretical and empirical rationales for acting strategically and the stages of a strategic planning process (Bryson, 2011), we also focus on learning and developing the skills to conduct strategic planning, including methods of stakeholders analysis, generating data for a SWOT analysis, logic models, and methods for assessing citizen priorities including citizen surveys and small group deliberations. As stated in my spring 2014 syllabus for Strategic Public Management (Schafer, 2014):

The purpose of this class is to introduce strategy as way of thinking about management and provide students with a set of tools and research skills that allow them to focus thinking, judgment and decision making in order to act strategically.

The benefits of role playing in the public administration classroom

Increasingly, scholars of teaching and public administration are noting the promise of simulations and games, including role play, to foster the skills demanded in the governance of public organizations (Goodman, 2008; Grummel, 2003; Newman, 1996). Role playing is when students assume the role of someone else to explore their motivations and positions and act as they would in a given scenario (Moore, 2009). Several rationales for using active learning approaches have been purported including, increased problem-solving and decision-making skills (Goodman, 2008), increased participation (O’Reilly, 2013), improved public-speaking skills (Fliter, 2009) and increased retention of knowledge (Barkley, 2009).

One particularly acute reason for using role play is to help students understand and learn to manage the heterogeneous, complex, and dynamic environment in which public policy is created and sustained. Silvia (2012) explains that simulations introduce an aspect of realism that traditional teaching methods regarding politics and the policy process don’t, as “… scenarios encountered draw upon realistic situations that are not compartmentalized by artificial chapter delineations” (p. 412). Similarly, Goodman (2008) argues, that the use of simulations in the classroom can help students to develop a better and more complete understanding of the challenges that contemporary public administrators face. Bots et al. (2010) in an evaluation of a simulation used to demonstrate the differences between the rational and political policy-making approaches, found that students that participated in role play had significant increases in learning about the political aspects of the policy process.

Role play is also useful in helping students to understand the relational aspects of the policy process (O’Reilly, 2013). “By engaging in the communication, negotiation and deal-making themselves, they realized not only ‘how it feels to be part of it’ but how important ongoing relations would be” (O’Reilly, 2013: 113). Poorman (2002) demonstrates that as a result of role play, students developed empathy and an appreciation for perspectives other than their own. Silvia (2012) noted that his students gained a greater appreciation for the “human dimension” (p. 407) of public management, gaining both self-awareness and sensitivity to others perspectives. Students also practice public speaking skills, framing and negotiation that provides valuable experience to take with them as they enter into real world scenarios (Fliter, 2009; O’Reilly, 2013).

Using role play in the classroom

In the Spring 2014 semester, I sought to include two role play-based simulations in a course on strategic management of public organizations with the specific intent to develop an awareness of the real world environment in which strategic plans are developed including the diversity and heterogeneity of interests that public administrators must incorporate into strategic plans and help students to develop the skills to manage the interpersonal and relational aspects of managing public organizations. Both simulations used during the course came from the E-PARCC website, hosted by Syracuse University that serves as an “open, online resource for those who teach the skills and concepts of collaborative governance around the world” (Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration; E-PARCC, 2015).

The first simulation came early in the semester. The intent was simply to introduce students to role play in the classroom and allow students to develop an appreciation for the divergent preferences and interests that exist in the landscape of public administration. The simulation, “Revising the Worker Protection Standards Negotiated Rulemaking Exercise” by Alma Lowry, was not directly related to the strategic management of public organizations but it had several elements that I felt were useful for our purposes. First, it had roles for at least 10 people, which was necessary in the class of 12 students. Second, it regarded rule-making, which is a generally contentious exercise, about agriculture workers. Kansas State University is in a state with a rich tradition of agriculture, and thus I suspected that students may be especially interested and aware of issues in this policy arena. Students were given their roles one week prior and were asked to write a short memo outlining their role, position in the negotiations, and any information that they would draw upon to support their position. The simulation was completed in 1.5 hours after which we debriefed by exploring what we learned about rule-making and the policy process more generally. I also asked students for feedback on the use of role playing.

Students suggested that some roles were more developed and easier to prepare for than others. Watching the simulation, I also noticed that some students dominated the exercise by providing strong factual or ideological support for their positions while others made only brief general comments. Originally, I thought this was a result of varying levels of preparation. However, as a group, we explored my hypothesis a bit more. We noted that some roles lent themselves to developing arguments informed by information, and others were based solely on ideological positions. Students given these roles felt it was more difficult to speak up as they felt that they could only reiterate a single point. In other words, students were uncomfortable taking strong ideological stances and advocating for them. In addition, I noted that as a facilitator it was fairly easy to negotiate a solution to the issue. Students demonstrated understanding of others’ point of view and were quick to make concessions, thus the simulation did not accurately portray the tense negotiations of rulemaking. Similarly, Silvia’s (2012) students, after a role-playing simulation, found that the activity did not seem realistic. While the experience certainly seemed worthwhile, inspiring discussion by the students about the political aspects of the policy process, I was less sanguine about the ability of the simulation to help students understand real world policy processes, and how difficult it is to manage conflictual political environments.

Fortunately, before the next scheduled simulation, an opportunity emerged that had the potential to increase the salience of simulations for students. I and another faculty member were contacted by the Center for Engagement and Community Development on campus to participate in a public decision-making workshop that was being held for Kansas State University resource and extension officers. This was a two-day workshop to help develop the facilitation and mediation skills of the officers. Some faculty proposed to teach different facilitation skills and decision making models. We suggested using our students to enact a simulation to allow the extension officers an outlet to practice their new skills.

Before the workshop, we practiced the simulation in class. The second simulation was Addressing ELCA: An Exercise in Designing and Facilitating Stakeholder Processes by Rob Alexander, which is also available on the E-PARCC website. The simulation called on students to act a variety of roles in the local governance of a city as they decided what to do about a vacant property with environmental health and hazard risks. The purpose of the simulation is to reach a consensus that the City should take action to mitigate risks. Again, I served as the facilitator. The simulation in class went well, albeit some of the problems noticed in the first simulation were present again. I then broke the students into two groups to facilitate the upcoming workshop and assigned the most prominent roles in the simulation to the students. Some of the more tertiary roles were not included. On the day of the workshop, four extension officers were assigned to facilitate two groups of my students. Some of the other contributing members of the workshop took on the tertiary roles in the simulation.

The simulation and the acting by the students and other participants, as part of the workshop, was far more dynamic than in the classroom. The outside participants, which had a great deal more experience with the situations that the simulation attempts to capture, took their roles very seriously and developed characters and character traits that went beyond their stated roles. For instance, one participant made many grumbling negative comments throughout the session including a sexist remark “… of course you would say that, you are women.” Another consistently insisted on getting off topic by asking unrelated questions. Notably, students also acted more into their roles: they were more energetic, forthcoming, and demanding in the point of views they expressed. After debriefing with the extension officers about the facilitation, I was able to speak to the students and glean their insights from the scenario.

Students suggested that having had experience with the facilitation, including hearing how others students played their roles in the previous simulation, helped them to develop their characters. Moreover, they noted that the eagerness of the outside participants prompted them to be more aggressive in their roles. They also remarked at having been able to see how trained professional facilitators handled the situation and the varying facilitation approaches which led to a good discussion about the different skills and tools of facilitation.

Discussion

As a result of the Spring 2014 semester and the use of simulations, I developed some ideas that I believe will help me in the future to insure that students get the most out of these practices; specifically, that they develop interpersonal and facilitation skills and an improved understanding of the real workings of a public administrator managing their environment.

My first lesson was to get out of the classroom. The typical environment of the classroom may not be conducive to helping students develop and act out their roles in the simulation. Students may be prone to recreating their roles in the class, with some speaking more and some less, or using the tone and tenor of more common classroom discussion. A new space for the workshop can recreate some of the real tension that exists when participants come to an unfamiliar locale to discuss issues. Secondly, if possible, don’t facilitate the role play yourself. I believe that students were used to me guiding discussion and generally being orderly in my presence. As a result, students did not seek to subvert or coopt the agenda and were amenable to negotiation. When the extension officers were facilitating, students seemed much more comfortable developing their roles and taking stronger positions. Moreover, having outside facilitators provided students an opportunity for comparison and thus to draw more insights about the skills and practices of facilitators. One additional note on facilitation I learned from this experience is that facilitators, in simulations, like in real-life public deliberations, should take special action to help those with minority opinions express their point of view, as they are more likely to acquiesce as has been demonstrated in the empirical literature on public deliberation (see: Carpini et al., 2004).

Another tip is to get an audience or engage participants from outside the class in the simulation. The outside participants in the third simulation had a great deal of experience working in the settings that the simulation tried to capture. They played their roles well and developed their characters including traits that they have witnessed in real-life settings. This helped students to understand the difficulties of managing some personality types as well as relating to and working with people with very different agendas and beliefs than themselves. It also appeared to make students engage in the simulation more than without them. One of the arguments for using simulations is that students, when asked to perform in front of their peers, will draw on their competitive instincts, increasing their motivation to do well (Wedig, 2010). However, in my graduate courses, much of the course is student-driven discussion, thus the competitive aspect may be reduced as students are already comfortable speaking in front of their peers. However, by bringing outsiders into the facilitation, especially people in jobs and positions in the community that public administration students may desire, the motivation to do well and present a position clearly and articulately was reified.

Another suggestion might be for a professor using role play to find a case, or to write into the roles of existing cases, some specific character traits that can guide students toward playing their role more realistically. For example, the one participant in the third simulation who not only expressed their viewpoint but also made the effort to make negative remarks regarding other’s ideas. Another suggestion, which I witnessed in practice during recent research on public deliberation, is to have a student playing a role come in late. I noticed that when participants came in late to a deliberation, the group spent significant time filling them in about previously discussed topics and still they were generally less willing to concede on issues as they were not part of the process that helped bring others to a consensus.

Finally, I believe that running the same simulation multiple times, at least twice, helped students recognize the dynamic nature of these settings. Specifically, different students playing the same role can change the outcomes of the process. As a result, students can witness the dynamic nature of the policy process and that the outcomes of the process are often a result of individual personalities and skill in presenting and advocating for their positions.

While the tips I present here helped to make the simulation come alive for my students, such opportunities may not be possible in other classrooms. Issues of class size may be an especially salient challenge for instructors of MPA courses wishing to use role play. My class of 12 seemed to work well for the simulations I chose and could facilitate slightly smaller or larger class sizes. However, those with much larger class sizes may be challenged to find cases with roles for all students. Still, many of the cases I have come across note that some roles could be played by multiple students. A larger class size may also be an opportunity to more accurately depict the scale of real world policy processes and increase the need to develop and practice good facilitation skills. I must also concede that my ability to bring outside facilitators into the simulation was result of good fortune and timing. However, as a Professor in a NASPAA accredited MPA program I believe that part of my job is to cultivate relationships with members of the local public administration community. I have always found alumni and other administrators to be eager to help develop the next generation. Bringing members of the community in to a role play with students may not only increase learning but be an opportunity to develop relationships that can help the program in many additional ways.

Conclusion

While I conducted no formal evaluation of learning from the role play exercise, I believe that using simulations was beneficial. Students appeared to have a positive experience and gain insights into the political nature of public administration. Moreover, I think they were able to develop and practice interpersonal and relational skills as part of the simulation, especially active listening, framing, reframing, synthesizing, and mobilizing. However, additional steps were necessary to bring the simulation to life. Simulations, used among students without real world experience may not accurately capture the scenario and thus reduce the potential benefits of using simulations. Taking active steps to insure that the students are engaged in the role play may help to overcome the issues I experienced. I hope my experience helps others to consider and use simulations in the classroom as well as search for ways to make the experience as beneficial as possible. I believe my insights also have the potential to inform future empirical research on the use of simulations. As researchers begin to examine the impacts of simulations, we must be careful to assess the quality of the experience. We cannot assess outcomes without first giving deference to, and measuring the quality of, the process.