Is role-play an effective teaching approach to assist tertiary students to improve teamwork skills?

Joseph Luca, Deanna Heal
School of Communications & Contemporary Arts
Edith Cowan University

Often student teams become dysfunctional as a result of inexperience and lack of prior knowledge. This exploratory study implements and evaluates a framework that attempts to scaffold teamwork skills through role-play activities. The review highlighted five essential teamwork skills that are supported with teaching materials. The results indicated that measuring change in team performance is difficult. However, the study showed that role-play was an effective teaching approach and well received by the students.

Keywords: teamwork, role-play, skills development, graduate attributes, communication skills, active listening, decision making, interdependence, interpersonal skills, conflict resolution