Abstract
Negotiation educators have long considered the use of role‐play simulations as an essential classroom teaching method, and have had high expectations regarding their suitability and efficacy for teaching. In this article, we review the literature to examine the degree to which simulations deliver on these perceived benefits, finding that simulations enjoy only limited advantages over other teaching methods.
We note three trends that have developed as part of this reevaluation process: improving the way simulations are conducted, deemphasizing the use of simulations as a teaching tool while seeking new methods, and finding paradigm‐changing uses for simulations. With regard to this last trend, we describe our own experiments assigning students to design their own simulations, rather than participate in them as role players. Among other benefits of the design method, we found that designers showed greater improvements in concept learning and motivation than did role players.
The central role accorded simulation or role‐play exercises in negotiation education has gone virtually unchallenged in the negotiation literature. The wider field of education has explored the educational value of role‐play exercises for the past fifty years, however, across a wide span of disciplines and subject matters. For the most part, the results of these investigations support the conclusion originally presented by Cleo Cherryholmes (1981) some time ago: role‐play exercises enhance student motivation when compared with the more traditional learning approaches of lectures and case studies but do not significantly improve concept learning. In addition, they may help students to retain the material learned. These findings could challenge many negotiation teachers’ assumptions about the learning benefits of role plays.
In this article, we review the literature evaluating the efficacy of learning through simulation, pointing out the method’s benefits as well as the areas in which it falls short of educators’ expectations. Next, we discuss the current debates regarding the use of simulation in negotiation education. Long an arena in which simulation is viewed as a primary teaching tool, negotiation pedagogy is currently undergoing some internal rethinking. The debate about the efficacy of simulations for learning has found its way into the literature of the field and has been joined with another critique against the method that has focused on the cultural and contextual suitability of simulation for negotiation education.
We also discuss in this article trends that have developed in response to these debates. Clearly, some of these responses include improving the way simulations are employed. The use of simulations in ways designed to more effectively maximize the method’s particular strengths is indeed likely to improve learning from negotiation courses. Recently, an impressive body of literature has reflected these improved approaches.
Another approach, however, recommends that negotiation teachers decrease their dependence on simulations, experimenting instead with other modes of learning. A third approach entails using simulations but substantially shifting their application to create new pathways to learning. Whichever approach is preferred by the teacher, negotiation education as a field should avoid throwing out the baby with the bathwater, on the one hand, and ensure that its search for effective teaching methods does not inadvertently lead to widely adopting untried and untested methods, on the other hand. In this article, we make several recommendations for navigating this period of transition.
Simulation in Negotiation Education
Simulations and role plays are widely employed teaching methods in negotiation education as well as in the pedagogy of other related fields.1 As summarized by Noam Ebner and Yael Efron (1974: 378):
It seems almost unnecessary to note the degree to which conflict resolution trainers rely upon the use of simulation games as a training tool. The literature singles out simulation games as a particularly effective method of education in negotiation (Meerts 2003; Winham 2005), mediation (Moore 2010), and peacebuilding (Truger 2011). This, combined with legislation making simulation games a mandatory element of professional training in several countries, merely reinforces what conflict resolution trainers have known all along: practice makes perfect. Successes, as well as failures, occurring in a controlled, debriefed environment enable the most efficient learning process.
Regarding negotiation in particular, Roy Lewicki (1994) reported that most negotiation courses in business schools incorporate simulations as a cornerstone of implementing the experiential learning methodology articulated by David Kolb (1975). More recently, Nadja Alexander and Michelle LeBaron (2009: 180) suggested that “[u]sing role‐plays in negotiation training has become as common as Santa at Christmas … or drinking beer at Oktoberfest … or expecting snow in a Canadian winter.”
Not to rely solely on observations by experienced teachers, we note several further indications of the degree to which negotiation teaching relies on the use of simulation. In a study of negotiation teaching in law schools conducted by Gerald Williams and Joseph Geis (1986), the authors surveyed articles describing negotiation courses as well as course syllabi. In all, they reported on twenty courses offered at different institutions between 1953 and 1996. All of these courses included the use of simulation. These findings continue to hold over time: surveying a more recent collection of ten negotiation course syllabi from 2003 to 2012 maintained by the Alternative Dispute Resolution Section of the Association of American Law Schools, we note that all of them include simulations among the teaching methods.
Ron Fortgang (2010) compared methods used to teach negotiation across a variety of fields, including courses taught in law, public policy and planning, business and international relations, and found that simulation was the only teaching method ranked “heavily used” in all fields.
Mediation education — a close relative of negotiation education — also relies heavily on role plays. A survey of forty mediation course syllabi has found role play to be the most commonly employed teaching method (Rabin 2011), and a survey of more than 130 mediation teachers participating in a mediation pedagogy conference hosted at Harvard University found that 96 percent of them used role play “very frequently” (66 percent) or “frequently” (30 percent). This was supported by their ranking role play as an “extremely important” (82.7 percent) or “important” teaching tool (15.3 percent) (Corsi 2010).
The use of simulation in negotiation education continues to remain widespread, and the method’s popularity is also evidenced by the proliferation of material now available to teachers. Collections of simulations are available to teachers on the Internet for free or for a fee.2 Development of quality simulations for free dissemination is promoted by ventures such as the simulation‐writing competition held by the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University.3 Negotiation and mediation competitions are becoming increasingly popular, with simulations providing the primary vehicle for participation and assessment (see Delicado et al. 1987).
As we explore throughout this article, the topic of simulation is arousing increasing interest among researchers. Why does simulation hold such a central role in our teaching? Clearly, teachers place a lot of faith in this method and expect it to provide excellent returns. What might those returns be?
Across disciplines, educators cite a wide variety of reasons for using simulations. These reasons will doubtlessly sound familiar to negotiation educators who, like the authors themselves, have utilized simulations as central building blocks in their teaching and training. Attempting to map out the phenomena of simulation advocacy, Cathy Greenblat (2012) identified six major reasons why teachers use simulations. Simulations, according to their advocates:
enhance student motivation to learn and student interest in the topic, the course, and learning in general;
enhance students’ concept learning, decision‐making skills, and systematic analytical skills;
improve future course work;
trigger affective learning of the subject matter by changing students’ perspectives and orientations, and increasing their empathy and appreciation of others’ circumstances;
enhance participants’ self‐awareness and self‐confidence; and
promote better student–student and student–teacher relations.
Surely, many negotiation educators view simulation as a tool that achieves all these goals (as well as some others). This leads them to place simulation at the core of their teaching methodology, sometimes to the near‐exclusion of other methods.
Because simulation underpins the learning experiences of so many negotiation students, examining the technique’s pedagogical efficacy and validating the results of that examination are clearly both necessary and logical: do simulations deliver the goods?
Research Findings on Learning through Simulation
As noted earlier, the efficacy of simulations for learning has more or less been taken for granted among negotiation educators and, until recently, has not been put to the test. Therefore, to appreciate the full scope of the scrutiny that has been applied to simulation in other arenas, we have reviewed the educational literature, focusing on simulations for learning about concepts in the social sciences.
The earliest evaluation of simulation learning and attitude outcomes was conducted by Cherryholmes (1981). He reviewed findings from six studies using a variety of complex simulations conducted over a period ranging from one day to twelve weeks. Four of the six studies involved undergraduates or high school students playing decision‐making roles in a game simulating early 1960s international relations (referred to as the Inter‐Nation Simulation or INS). He used election, career, legislative, and disaster games in the other studies.
Cherryholmes evaluated five hypotheses to compare simulations with conventional teaching methods including reading case studies and recitation. Only one hypothesis was supported at an acceptable statistical level. In five of the six studies, students reported more interest in the simulation than in conventional activities. Students did not show increased learning of facts and concepts in any of the studies. They did not retain more information over an eight‐week period in the one study in which this was assessed. Nor did the students in this study show gains over the control group on critical thinking or problem‐solving skills. Three of the studies showed mixed results on attitude change, with students developing more realistic attitudes following an election game and in one of two studies using the INS.
Thus, results from this small set of studies strongly supported the hypothesis that simulations increase students’ interest in the topic and modestly supported the hypothesis that simulations improve students’ attitudes. But fact and concept learning, retention, and critical thinking skills were not improved.
Other researchers asked whether these results would be replicated with other groups of students conducting different types of simulations. This question was addressed by David Pierfy (2012) in a review of findings from comparative evaluations of simulations and conventional methods in the 1960s and 1970s. He found support in the subsequent studies for some of Cherryholmes’s hypotheses. Seven of the eight studies that measured student interest confirmed Cherryholmes’s findings, reporting that students had more interest in the simulation activities than in more conventional classroom tasks.
Eight of eleven studies that compared simulation’s impact on attitude change to conventional instruction methods found significant positive effects. In addition, eight of eleven studies examining material retention through an identical delayed post‐test showed that students participating in simulations retained the information longer than those exposed to other instructional techniques.
With regard to concept learning (facts and principles), however, in the realm of social studies, fifteen of twenty‐one studies found no difference between simulations and other instructional techniques. Apparently, students do not discover structural relationships in the simulation; they memorize them. Thus, Cherryholmes’s results about interest and attitude change were supported by Pierfy’s larger sampling of studies, and his finding that there were no significant differences on learning and critical thinking were also upheld. Pierfy’s review of findings on retention, however, contradicted Cherryholmes’s earlier result that found no improvement in retention, which had been based on only one study.
In their update of Pierfy’s review, Mary Bredemeier and Cathy Greenblat (2005) similarly concluded that simulations are as effective as — but not better than — other instructional methods for learning a particular subject. Simulations do, however, show advantages, they found, in the areas of retention and interest: simulations are more effective than other instructional methods in helping students retain the learned material and in instilling a positive attitude toward the subject matter.
These patterns were confirmed by a review of a larger number of evaluation studies by Josephine Randel et al. (1977). First, they narrowed down the literature for review, focusing only on studies comparing the efficacy of games for learning with the efficacy of conventional classroom methods, and eliminating other literature summing up teachers’ opinions and teacher ratings of classes that had used games and simulations. Next, they examined sixty‐nine comparative studies carried out over a twenty‐eight‐year period. Fifty‐six percent of the comparisons showed no difference between simulations and other instructional methods.
Subject matter, however, must be taken into account when judging the effectiveness of using simulations for teaching negotiation. Most of the studies favoring simulation as a vehicle for learning were focused on learning of mathematics and languages. Randel and her colleagues noted that with regard to social science studies, only ten of forty‐four studies favor games (see also the meta‐analysis by Van Sickel 1999). With regard to retention, ten of fourteen studies favored simulation over conventional methods; these included simulations with social science and other types of subject matter. With regard to student interest, in twelve of fourteen studies (across subject areas), students reported having more interest in the simulation than in the conventional classroom experience. Thus, these authors reaffirmed the earlier reviews, showing that — across a wide range of subject matters, and particularly those with relevance to negotiation education — simulation does not improve short‐term concept learning. It does, however, improve retention and enhance interest in the subject matter, although these findings are based on fewer studies.
Although a number of these studies suffered a variety of design and measurement problems (see Druckman 1995), two clear patterns can be discerned across many types of studies. First, students learning social‐science topics through simulations do not show better learning or critical thinking outcomes than those who studied those topics with other methods. Second, simulations do enhance participants’ motivation. Exactly what constitutes “motivation” has varied from study to study, which may make the findings about creating positive attitude more robust. In general, motivation has been defined broadly to capture elements such as student interest, commitment, positive attitude toward the material, and desire or willingness to engage in a similar activity again (see Cherryholmes 1981; Pierfy 2012; Bredemeier and Greenblat 2005; Randel et al. 1977; Ellington, Fowlie, and Gordon 2006).
Addressing our original question of whether simulation lives up to its reputation, the research discussed previously would lead us to conclude that it does, but not completely. Concept retention and motivation, on the one hand, do tend to be enhanced through the use of simulation. Initial concept learning, however, is not enhanced. The other presumed advantages of using simulations that were identified by Greenblat have not been evaluated in the research literature published to date.
Returning to the use of simulation for teaching negotiation in particular, we note that teachers typically ascribe two other benefits to this method: simulation’s efficacy for helping students develop behavioral skills and its potential for triggering pedagogical high‐impact events or insights, referred to also as “a‐ha!” moments. These benefits — which the authors have also experienced while teaching with simulations — have not been evaluated.
Lest we be misconstrued at this early point in our review of this topic, we do not suggest that all the benefits that teachers associate with role playing are nonexistent or overestimated! On the contrary, our goal is to help teachers consider how to use this tool for maximum effect in their teaching. We argue, therefore, that simulation may not be as effective for achieving all negotiation teaching goals as it has been popularly perceived to be. Teachers should be intentional when using role‐play — just as they should with any other teaching method — and take the benefits and shortcomings into account when deciding how much time to dedicate to this method, what types of learning to promote with it, and the timing of its use. Before discussing these considerations, however, we will note several other issues that teachers should consider before using simulations.
Additional Critiques of Role‐Play Teaching
The somewhat surprising conclusions regarding the effectiveness of simulation raise questions about the central role it plays in the negotiation classroom. But efficacy aside, critiques of teaching through role play have come from several other directions. We will note three that should be taken into account as educators reconsider how to use this tool.
Pedagogical and Logistical Considerations
Using role plays can be a time‐consuming way to teach. Because negotiation teachers often find themselves apologizing for material not covered, examples not given, and questions not addressed, the time expenditure of simulations warrants reconsideration. Moreover, simulations require teachers to be skilled in performing a wide range of tasks, including simulation administration, role assignment, and conducting debriefings. The use of simulations often requires the availability of breakout rooms and teaching assistants — resources not always at hand.
Another consideration is that conducting simulations is a relatively risky pedagogical activity. Depending, as it does, on participants’ engagement and motivation, simulation‐based teaching is open to undermining by students (see Alexander and LeBaron 2009). One unengaged or counterproductive student can derail an exercise for his or her negotiation group or for an entire class. Sometimes, students under‐ or over‐identify with their roles, with detrimental effect, while in other cases, a student in a critical role may be unprepared or unexpectedly absent, or others may be distracted (e.g., answering the phone or texting in the middle of the exercise).
Transferability and Verisimilitude
Do the dynamics encountered in role plays bear sufficient similarity to real‐life dynamics to allow us to suppose that increasing students’ adeptness in the former setting will improve their achievements in the latter? Some suggest that our assumptions of transferability from role play to reality are exaggerated (see Alexander and LeBaron 2009). Elizabeth Stokoe (1983: 5) has noted several problems stemming from the question of “How real can role play be?” Participants in role plays, she says, “are unlikely to be oriented to the same interactional contingencies as they would be in actual settings, even if they rate role‐playing as ‘authentic’ after the event.” She has further argued that direct evaluation of simulations, which might raise the stakes for students (and has been proposed in a variety of forms by negotiation educators; see, e.g., Raiffa 2010; Coben 2010; Fuller 2010; Nelken 1991), does not offer a panacea. Students’ performance might indeed be at stake, but the negotiated issue — be it a peace treaty or a car sale — is not. This directs students toward pleasing their teachers and away from engaging in a close facsimile of a real‐world interaction.
Surveying literature from the fields of linguistics and conversational analysis, Stokoe has also suggested that the basic dynamics of real‐life situations on a conversational level (i.e., turn taking and number of interruptions) might play out differently in role‐play, challenging the value of these for practicing conversations. Noting methodological challenges to the studies she reviewed, she has suggested that this area merits more investigation. Her own research, in which she analyzed recorded police interrogations to show variation between real‐life and simulated situations, also identified differences that cast doubt on the transferability of training based on role play (Stokoe 1983). Stokoe’s (1965) research poses two conceptual challenges: can simulated encounters mimic real‐life situations enough to be of pedagogic value, and, more fundamentally, is interaction realistically simulate‐able at all?4
The Cultural and Contextual Suitability of Teaching with Simulations
In their 2009 chapter critiquing the use of role play in negotiation education, Alexander and LeBaron suggested that perhaps the time has come for “the death of the role play” — or, at least, for diminishing its central role in negotiation pedagogy. One of their most important critiques is that taking on others’ identities (whether fictional or real) — a basic premise of role play — may be disrespectful, or nonsensical, in some cultural settings. Another is that role play encourages parties to play roles that are unfamiliar, which may force participants to rely on stereotypes. The use of simulations as a teaching method originated in the West, the authors argued, but they have since been used in many non‐Western cultural and contextual settings. Working with participants with different cultural attitudes toward relationships, status, context, and play acting, role playing could cause confusion and create rifts between students, between students and teachers, and between students and the content being studied. The plausibility of these assertions, however, remains to be evaluated.
Two caveats seem to emanate from our discussion thus far: simulation may not be a suitable method for teaching in all contexts, by all teachers, and in all settings; and, even when it is suitable, it is not the all‐purpose negotiation teaching vehicle that some teachers might assume it to be.
In response to the research that suggests the limited effectiveness of simulations as well as the additional critiques about its suitability in different contexts, three ideas present themselves:
The use of simulations in negotiation education should be more limited.
The use of simulations in negotiation education should be improved.
Simulations should be used, but in new and hitherto unexplored ways.
We will now discuss these approaches in turn.
Decreased Reliance on Simulation
One school of thought recommends that simulations should play a less central role in negotiation. According to this approach, the slack should be picked up by other methods, albeit still in the realm of experiential learning. For instance, some educators have advocated employing “adventure learning” as a supplement to, or replacement for, simulation. Adventure learning involves an educational experience in which negotiation students abandon the regular classroom environment, at least to some degree, and conduct real‐life interactions involving, or more obliquely pertaining to, negotiation skills. Lynn Cohn and Noam Ebner (2012) have suggested that the following types of exercises might be fall under the category of adventure learning:
a classroom experience with real implications for the student;
a role play set in a real‐world setting, in which students engage with professional negotiation counterparts;
an assignment in which students negotiate for themselves;
an assignment that involves the student applying a key concept from the course out of class;
an opportunity to observe or participate in real‐life negotiations of others; or
an out‐of‐class experience that does not involve negotiating directly but that enhances the student’s understanding of negotiations.
Adventure learning, therefore, is related to role play as an experiential form of learning and may even overlap role play. In contrast with traditional role play, however, adventure learning intends to send students into the real world to experience unscripted interactions, which are then debriefed and related to class‐taught concepts. The same characteristics apply to a related approach involving service‐learning projects implemented in the framework of negotiation courses (Kenworthy‐U’Ren 1981b). Because this path leads, at least for the most part, out of the realm of simulation, we will not expand on it here. (For recent discussions of adventure learning by authors well versed in simulation, see Coben, Honeyman, and Press 1966; Kamp 1981a; Larson 2003; Manwaring, McAdoo, and Cheldelin 2010; Panga and Grecia‐de Vera 2003; Press and Honeyman 2009; Deason et al., forthcoming‐a; Fox and Press, forthcoming.)
Interesting as these suggestions are, we would be wise to remember one caveat: if critique of simulation clears some space in the pedagogical toolbox, any experiential method employed to fill that space needs to pass the same tests responsible for its clearing. Adventure learning’s cultural and contextual suitability requires examination, and its efficacy regarding content learning, student motivation, and material retention remain unexplored (Ebner and Kovach 2005). The speed with which the field of negotiation education subjects this method to efficacy testing might be considered a sign of its pedagogical maturity.
Improved Use of Simulation
The question of how to best make simulation participation a valuable learning method is not new, and the literature has provided many suggestions. Examples include:
clarifying learning objectives (Bredemeier and Greenblat 2005);
providing conceptual background on the subject prior to the simulation activity (Druckman and Robinson 1971);
creating time for reflection and feedback (McLaughlan and Kirkpatrick 2009); and
providing participants with conceptual maps and graphics that reflect the simulation’s purpose (Duke 2008).
To be fair, we must note that while these and other suggestions have been made over the years aiming to improve the contribution of educational simulations to subject‐matter learning, they have not fundamentally reversed the convergent data regarding learning efficacy, as discussed previously. This supports the suggestion that improvements in the use of simulation should focus on enhancing simulation’s proven benefits, rather than seeking to restore its use as a an all‐purpose method.
Over the past few years, the negotiation education field has directed considerable attention toward improving the use of simulations. Some of the suggestions have been grounded in educational or adult‐learning theory; others express original pedagogical approaches. In this section, we will discuss some of the recent recommendations made regarding simulation design and conduct. It remains to be seen whether their cumulative implementation might result in an improvement in the educational gains achieved by simulation.
In a recent paper, Noam Ebner and Kimberlee Kovach (2005) made suggestions for improving simulations’ use. They revisited overarching considerations for using role play, in light of both the efficacy challenge and the cultural critique discussed earlier. Their discussion was broken down into four parts:
choice of method, specifically, should role play be used at all?;
simulation selection/design;
conduct of simulations; and
feedback and debrief.
Choice of Method
The choice of which methods to use in teaching negotiation should be intentional. Given that role play does not necessarily help students learn content or concepts better than other methods, such as a classroom lecture, and is time‐ and labor‐intensive, we suggest that teachers should consider using it only when it is a particularly suitable method.
Teachers would, therefore, be advised to take advantage of role play’s primary proven benefit as a teaching tool, namely, arousing student interest and motivation. This might affect the timing of teaching with simulation: role plays might best be interspersed throughout a course rather than concentrated in blocs, or scheduled for times or topics prone to attention and motivation problems. To capitalize on role play’s advantage for enhancing retention, teachers might use the method for those concepts they consider most important
Many teachers of negotiation see simulation as a key tool for enhancing behavioral skills. While this effect still needs to be validated through experimentation,5 it seems plausible to many teachers in the field. Lawrence Susskind and Jason Corburn (1987) have demonstrated how this assumption is grounded in pedagogical theory and reported a survey of opinions, provided by leading negotiation teachers, supporting this claim. Should future research bear out the positive effects of simulation in enhancing behavioral skills, the use of simulations should be tailored and timed to promote this aim as well. For example, a lesson on communication skills could be followed by a simulation that focuses primarily on conversational dynamics (as opposed to preparing for negotiation, strategizing, etc.).
Teachers might also consider ending a course with a role play that incorporates those elements they consider to be the most important take‐aways. More attention might be paid to methods that can feed into, and feed off of, simulation, viewing these as complementary rather than competing teaching tools. These could include improvisation (Balachandra et al. 2012) and observational or analogical learning (see Spector 2011; Rosan 2010). (In a similar vein, students would need to participate in a role‐play simulation before they could design one; simulation design is discussed later.)
Simulation Selection and Design
Ebner and Kovach (2005) suggest that teachers pay careful attention to their choice of simulation (or to the design process of a new simulation), on a case‐by‐case (or course‐by‐course) basis, rather than using a standard set of simulations for students, without much consideration for context or culture. Matching simulations to specific settings, then, requires that educators take a different approach: less top‐down and more curious or learner‐oriented. This entails accommodating, at the simulation selection or design stage, cultural or contextual issues that might promote or interfere with participants’ motivation to partake in the simulation as a learning experience. In this regard, several authors have commented on the relationship between simulation and reality — not in the classic sense of transferability between the former and the latter, but rather in the sense of reality serving as a mediating element between students and the simulation.
Noam Ebner and Yael Efron (1974) suggested employing a simulation design method, dubbed “pseudo‐reality,” to engage elements of reality to facilitate students’ identification and comfort with their roles, while discarding elements that might provoke disturbing or disruptive reactions. Roger Volkema’s (1995) suggestions for incorporating real elements into negotiation classrooms and simulations, such as giving the student a real‐life financial stake in their simulation performance, harness authentic motivation in the service of simulation. Niclas Andersson and Pernille Andersson (2010) described the benefits of enhancing the verisimilitude of already realistic role‐play training for engineers by having industry professionals take part in the simulation together with novice learners. An earlier example of the same approach was taken by Daniel Druckman and his colleagues (1995): clergy were brought to the simulation lab to participate in an ecumenical decision‐making simulation designed for students who assumed those clerical roles. Lynn Cohn and Noam Ebner (2012) suggested similar benefits for having negotiation students participate in role play opposite professional negotiators.
On the other hand, reality can also be manipulated as a mediating element between students and their learning. Alexandra Crampton and Melissa Manwaring (2010) suggested keeping in mind that embedding simulations too firmly in one particular reality might adversely affect the potential for analogous learning (see also Klatsky and Reder 1998). They also note the benefits of utilizing simulations — which are artificial in terms of the context, background facts, and limited choices available — for eliciting particular dynamics central to a negotiation course.
In tailoring simulations for use in particular educational frameworks, designers must be careful to provide useful learning exercises reflecting the realities of negotiating in particular fields in a meaningful way. A good example of this is in the field of legal education. Negotiation simulations conducted in this setting often situate negotiating lawyers as “parachuting in” to a situation just in time to conduct a final settlement negotiation. This does not reflect the reality of legal negotiation: lawyers are often called in to consult and to represent at early stages of a dispute, and encounter multiple negotiation interactions along the way. John Lande (2010) suggests constructing legal negotiation courses around multistage simulations, which more authentically reflect the realities of legal negotiation by taking students through the following phases:
conduct an initial client interview;
negotiate and draft a retainer agreement;
develop a relationship with the counterpart lawyer;
conduct factual and/or legal research;
work with the counterpart to plan the negotiation process;
prepare the client for a negotiation session;
conduct the ultimate negotiation;
engage a mediator and/or mediate the matter; and
draft a settlement agreement.
One could take a similar approach to tailoring simulations for a negotiation course focused on business or public planning settings.
Other authors have suggested that simulation design more carefully consider issues of scale, scope, time invested, and the level of detail desirable in the instructions. Lande’s multistage simulations as well as Stephen Weiss’s (2005) suggestions for “mega‐simulations” target complex negotiation realities by investing heavily in time and detail. Other teachers have recommended methods for minimizing the investment of class and administration time usually required for simulation. For example, Joshua Weiss (2001) described asking students in online negotiation courses to negotiate with friends who are not participants in class, and to do so on their own schedule rather than at any specific time. David Matz and Noam Ebner (1997) recommended further ways to implement these ideas in online courses as well as in traditional face‐to‐face courses. For an example of a simulation intended for use with minimal time expenditure, see Ebner and Efron (2009). This last relies on an approach that minimizes the level of detail in the simulation’s storyline; contrast this with the approach of Melissa Conley Tyler and Naomi Cukier (2012), who, as a rule, suggest a more balanced approach with regard to detail.
Yet another issue receiving attention is that of matching the simulation’s storyline with the media through which it is conducted. With online education proliferating — as a stand‐alone venue or as a support venue for face‐to‐face courses — incorporating online simulation is often necessary (see Matz and Ebner 1997) or recommended (Ebner et al. 1998) and enjoys particular advantages for student assessment (Nelken 1991). To maintain student engagement, simulation designers will need to negotiate the technological leap into the computer‐mediated world. Adequate technology is already available and widespread, and more sophisticated platforms are in development.
The base of knowledge regarding e‐simulations is growing, although some negotiation faculty members remain reluctant to use them. Indeed, a survey of instructors teaching negotiation online showed that quite a few of them did not use role play in their online courses, whereas they did in comparable courses they taught offline. They claimed that this was due to perceived technological barriers (Matz and Ebner 1997). These barriers are becoming easier to hurdle with each passing day, as we have also learned from our own experience.
Designers need to consider the characteristics of online communication as they envision the dynamics they intend to evoke through the simulation. Additionally, the storylines and plots that serve as the background for online simulations should be matched to real‐life transactions and interactions likely to be conducted online (Ebner et al. 1998). A storyline incorporating parties in separate locales negotiating the price of a domain name (see, e.g., Manwaring 2012) makes “online sense.” Conversely, an online negotiation between neighbors, or between a car salesperson and a customer situated in a car lot, would feel out of place. Similarly, given the proliferation of blended learning, a simulation should be intentionally considered and designed in conjunction with the media through which it will be debriefed (see Ruyters, Douglas, and Law 2010).6
Conducting Simulations
Ebner and Kovach (2005) made recommendations with the goal of rebalancing the negotiation course from one that relies heavily on simulation to one that depends on a wider array of teaching methods. A common objection by negotiation teachers to new teaching methods is “I’d love to do that, but there’s just no time!” Ebner and Kovach offer thoughts on ways to cut down on use of class time for simulations — allowing this time to be dedicated to other methods. For example, students can prepare their role plays ahead of time, instead of on the spot in class. Teachers might assign a simulation, or part of a simulation, as an out‐of‐class assignment (see Weiss 2005). The simulation might be negotiated through e‐mail, to allow participants more flexibility.7 (For more on conducting role plays at‐a‐distance, see Matz and Ebner 2010.) These exercises can be debriefed in class to retrieve common dynamics and insights by means of a reflective assignment or by a teacher evaluation of a recorded negotiation transcript — once again, cutting down on the in‐class time dedicated to the actual role play (see Nelken 1991). On the other hand, teachers not lacking for time might engage in one‐on‐one conduct of simulations with their students, for purposes of learning and assessment (see Fuller 2010).
Ebner and Kovach (2005) recommend dedicating more time to students’ preparation for the simulation. In some academic courses (and in many professional training workshops), students are provided the simulation information immediately preceding the role play, leading to rushed preparation, in which the goal is to quickly learn the minimum needed to get started. When possible, role information should be provided well in advance. Instructors might supplement the role instructions with preparation instructions or forms, priming students to focus on particular elements relevant to the learning goals of the exercise. As a result, the participants would have more time to review and become familiar with the material, as well as designing the approaches they plan to take. By assigning the preparation as homework, teachers can reduce in‐class negotiation setup time to a minimum.
Teachers might consider providing participants with more direction in role plays, as opposed to giving them a role information sheet and assuming they will figure it out for themselves. This might lower anxiety and misunderstandings, which Alexander and LeBaron (2009) argued are tied to overacting and under‐engagement in simulations. In some instances, specific instructions for a role play could include preset reactions or emotions to be displayed, or messages to be conveyed to the other party at a particular point to trigger or telescope dynamics. These moments of reverting to a predetermined script, rather than improvising or taking shots in the dark, might provide a calming respite for some students. Teachers might also use indirect measures to affect in‐the‐room dynamics, such as subtly immersing students in situations in which real‐life in‐group/out‐group dynamics are likely to form, and then having them engage in a salient role play (Crampton and Manwaring 2010).
Teachers wishing to use simulations for teaching concepts should be aware that they have been shown to be more effective when used as a hybrid tool in conjunction with other experiential methods. In other words, should teachers prefer to use simulation as a multipurpose tool (for teaching as well as for enhancing motivation and retention), they should not use it as a stand‐alone. In a 2003 study, Janice Nadler, Leigh Thompson, and Leaf Van Boven found that sequencing the use of other experiential methods — particularly analogical learning and observational learning — in conjunction with simulation resulted in better negotiation outcomes for students, and, to a lesser degree, in better concept understanding than use of multiple simulations. In particular, the use of analogical teaching — teaching students to deal with a novel situation by transferring knowledge from a familiar situation — was found to be most helpful for concept understanding, measured in terms of their skill in reflecting on the learning principles that helped them improve their gains from one simulation to the next. (For more on using analogical teaching in negotiation, see Moran, Bereby‐Meyer, and Bazerman 2010; see also Spector 2011 and Rosan 2010.)
Finally, teachers might consider using advances in technology to conduct simulations. One example would be having students conduct negotiations with computerized or automated agents serving as counterparts rather than with other students (Lin, Oshrat, and Krauss 1974).
Feedback and Debriefing
The negotiation educational material offers extensive and evolving guidance on the use of simulation debriefing and feedback to participants (e.g., Deason et al., forthcoming‐b). Ideas are raised and nailed down, participants’ experiences are connected back to theory and ahead to future practice, and concept learning may occur. Students also experience “a‐ha!” moments that further enhance their motivation.
Ebner and Kovach (2005) stressed the value of video recording simulations for later analysis. Rather than spend time recreating participants’ acting, which can trigger “ ‘you‐did‐this’ ‘no‐I‐didn’t’ ” dynamics, as well as other types of defensiveness, video recordings allow participants to relive the moments. This results in enhanced accuracy in participants’ self‐reflection and analysis, an important but challenging element of professional education (Schön 1992, 2008). While some authors have discussed the benefits of using dedicated annotated software to debrief video‐recorded simulations (see Williams, Farmer, and Manwaring 2007), the basic learning benefits associated with having a handy, authentic record to return to for review can be achieved with the recording and playback features on a decent‐quality mobile phone. This makes what used to be a cumbersome production requiring equipment and professional assistance into an inexpensive method with which many students are already familiar.8 To a large extent, the same rationale applies to other means of recording or transcribing, such as conducting simulations through e‐mail.
Stokoe (1965), having pointed out several shortcomings of simulation (see previous discussion), has recommended an innovative approach to conducting role plays, which she has implemented in mediation training. Abandoning the traditional format of giving students roles to play against each other, with an array of instructions and background information, she prefers to use transcripts and recordings from real mediations with a stop‐action approach: at critical moments in the real‐life scenario, the action is paused, and all students play the role of the mediator, who must respond to a statement by one of the parties. They spend several minutes suggesting and practicing responses. These responses are then compared with the response given in the real‐life situation, and the role play resumes until it is paused at the next critical moment.
As negotiation teachers, we believe that we should revisit our intuitive notions regarding simulation as well as our practices concerning this method. Given the research reporting the limited advantages of this teaching method compared with the far‐reaching claims of its effectiveness as well as the pedagogical risks it involves, negotiation simulation should, we argue, be timed, selected, designed, carried out, and debriefed with care, attention, and intentionality. We turn now to a third approach to simulation for negotiation education: designing scenarios.
Simulation Design
Simulation design has usually been seen as mere prologue to the main act, namely, role playing the simulation. But simulation design is, in its own right, an act of creation and integration, of refinement and clarification. Far from being a technical act or an offhand scribbling, it requires understanding the concepts the simulation seeks to spotlight and an appreciation of the interparty dynamics these concepts trigger in the real world. In the course of creating a simulation, then, one visits and revisits his or her own understanding and emerges with something new, refined, and clarified. In short, simulation design itself entails a learning process.
The learning benefits of simulation design were by no means ignored by veteran simulation designers. In their descriptions of simulation design and implementation, several designers have mentioned the learning benefit that design activities entail. Some commented on this directly, while others make the learning advantages apparent in the way they describe or prescribe the design process. Druckman (1971) provided examples of how designers learn to conceptualize system processes. Cherryholmes (1981: 7) recommended that students be given “the task of designing a simulation before playing it, either re‐designing an existing game or constructing a simple game of their own.” In discussing students’ experiences in playing a game called SIMSOC, William Gamson (1998: 67) remarked that, “Playing a game may be a more active experience than listening to a lecture, but developing a game is more active still.” He noted that the design process contributes to the development of analytical skills because authors must identify critical elements with clarity, search for concreteness, synthesize the elements (roles, goals, resources, and rules), and develop new analytical questions (see also Greenblat 2000).
Surprisingly, though, this observation has been relegated to anecdotes, and students have generally not been tasked to design simulations. There are two possible explanations. First, early authors adopted a top‐down approach: teachers or simulation experts created simulations for student‐participants. The literature placed educators at the center of conceptualizing and mapping the design process, as exemplified in the writings of Richard Duke (2008) and Greenblat (2012). Second, no evidence had yet supported the notion that simulation design is effective for learning. Authors shared anecdotes largely based on their experience; none subjected the possibility of learning through design to the types of efficacy‐testing that participation in simulations underwent in the studies discussed above. A search of the literature for any such study left us empty handed: simulation‐design as a teaching tool was not evaluated, and its efficacy had not been investigated systematically.
Simulation Design versus Role Play
Having experienced the benefits of design ourselves and having taken seriously the views of game designers, we decided to experiment with simulation design. We conducted a series of experiments to assess the comparative value of role play and design, by setting up the following conditions. After hearing a lecture regarding three negotiation concepts (alternatives, time pressure, and power), students were randomly assigned to one of three groups. One group was tasked to design simulations incorporating these concepts into its storyline and instructions. Another group was assigned to role play these simulations.9 A third group served as a control by listening to the lecture and not partaking in any further activity before completing the questionnaire.
Following each group’s activity, its members were requested to respond to a questionnaire that focused on learning and motivation. To assess retention of the material, students in all three groups were requested to respond to the same questionnaire one week later. The experiment was conducted with three classes of students, two in Israel and one in Australia, with eighty students participating overall. For a full description of the experimental design and a discussion of the considerations behind it, see Druckman and Ebner (2012).10
The experiment resulted in four findings regarding the learning and motivational impacts of simulation role players and scenario designers.11
The process involved in designing scenarios enhanced short‐term concept learning more than playing roles in those scenarios; role playing did not improve perceived learning over the control group.
The relation among the various concepts was better understood by designers than by role players or controls. Further, role players did not understand the conceptual relationships better than the students in the control groups who only listened to the lecture.
Designers retained their understanding of the concepts better than the role players did.
Designers demonstrated higher degrees of satisfaction and enjoyment than role players (this was particularly noteworthy in the Israeli experiment). The control group members were more satisfied with the results than the role players were but enjoyed the exercise somewhat less.
Over the course of working “behind the scenes,” designers learned more about and retained negotiation concepts better than did their “onstage” role‐playing counterparts.12 Moreover, they were more satisfied with the results and put more effort into the exercise than the role players did. These results were obtained both in Australia and Israel, across several iterations of the experiments, demonstrating the robustness of the findings.
These results challenge some long‐held beliefs by negotiation teachers and trainers regarding the advantages and efficacy of role‐play simulation. The role players in this study indicated less understanding of the negotiation concepts being studied than did simulation designers according to both short‐term learning and retention assessments. They were less creative than designers in their brief essays about relations among the concepts, although they did demonstrate equivalent understanding in their essays on each of the separate concepts. They also showed less motivation than did the designers in both short‐term and retention assessments.13
We were most surprised by the retention and motivation findings: they did not support our hypotheses, which were based on the earlier results discussed in the literature. These aspects of learning and involvement were enhanced in the simulations used in the studies reviewed earlier. In our experiments, however, these documented advantages of simulation were trumped by the designers’ higher levels of retention and motivation (compared with role players). The magnitude of the findings from our study — obtained for several negotiation concepts and replicated in two countries — does raise questions about the earlier results.
One way of reconciling the different findings is in terms of the content domains of the simulations that were evaluated. The earlier studies examined a diverse set of simulations, including life and career issues, an election campaign, and sailing around the world. None used a negotiation scenario. A question raised by the discrepant findings is whether simulated negotiations have fewer learning and motivational advantages than those that deal with other topics. An answer awaits the results from evaluations of other negotiation simulation studies in which designs are based on different concepts, and participants come from other populations. More generally, finding that designing outdoes role‐play participation on its home turf, so to speak, highlights the pedagogical value of incorporating simulation‐design activities into negotiation courses. It does not, however, negate other advantages of role play, and it suggests that both activities be used in class.
The spread of results from this experiment provides empirical support for the intuitive observations made by the professional designers cited earlier. However, there is no clear, accepted, obvious explanation for the advantage of design over role‐play. Three possible explanations have been suggested. One explanation is that design encourages active involvement with the material, also referred to as concreteness (e.g., Greenblat 2000; Crookall 2008). Another explanation is the value of synthesis or seeing connections between ideas and processes (e.g., Druckman 1971; Duke 2008), including an appreciation for the long‐term consequences of how the designed system is likely to evolve (Toth 1995). A third explanation refers to generating analytical questions. All of these elements contribute to linking abstract thinking with concrete implementation in the form of a simulation. All are likely to result from a design experience to a higher degree than they are likely to manifest during a role play. They may differ, however, on their relative contribution to learning (synthesis), retention (question generation), and motivation (concreteness). Other explanations may exist as well.
Among the four findings, we were particularly struck by the finding that designers displayed a better grasp of the relationships among concepts than did role players. Synthesis is particularly important in studying negotiation. One common observation is that the negotiation process is not sequential but rather reflects tension among various elements formed by the way these influence each other over time (see Sawyer and Guetzkow 1982; Ebner and Kamp 2012). The interaction and relation among the various elements are what make each process unique, and present the negotiator with both his or her greatest opportunity for gain and risk for loss.
To demonstrate the importance of understanding relations among concepts, let us consider a negotiation between management and union representatives during a strike. Positions taken by the parties at the bargaining table are influenced by an interplay among the following factors: state of the economy, current administration policy on unemployment, the wage‐price spiral, community standards of living, working conditions and compensation packages at other firms in the same industry, company budget and costs for alternative agreements, union funds/strike costs, and the history of the strike including what issues may have generated grievances. Defining these factors in a simulation scenario is one design challenge. Conceptualizing relationships among them is another. For example, compensation packages at other companies in the industry may depend on the state of the economy as well as company profits and the community’s standard of living. Compensation rates can also function as alternatives for employees who must balance opportunities against the costs of striking and time pressure to negotiate a contract. Creating a scenario that ties these concepts together forces the designer to appreciate and manage complexity, and to understand how complex relationships may change over time (see Druckman 1971).
An example from another setting illustrates the three negotiation concepts at issue in our experiments (alternatives, time pressure, and power). Consider a landlord–tenant negotiation. In a hypothetical simulation, suppose that the landlord has informed the tenant he will raise the rent by 10 percent. The tenant, a student at a nearby university, could move into the residential halls on campus but would prefer to remain in her apartment. She also knows that finding another apartment convenient to the university could be tough, but with a few months left on her lease, she has time to find one if necessary. She sees no logical reason for the price hike and thinks that the landlord would be hard‐pressed to find another tenant willing to pay the higher rent. The landlord, on the other hand, anticipates no difficulty finding a new tenant at the increased rate in such a booming university town. To further complicate matters, however, he will be traveling out of the country for several months and hopes to resolve the matter before leaving; otherwise, he runs the risk of leaving the apartment empty and unrented until he returns.
This example illustrates how easily scenarios can be crafted to include interplay among a given set of elements. Students can (and will) add additional elements, and the way they balance the details of the simulation will demonstrate their grasp of the elements and the nature of their interplay. In this example, one student might write a version in which the tenant is anxious about losing her home or unwilling to move onto campus. Another might alter the balance by noting that the landlord has had bad experiences with previous tenants and prefers not to lose his current responsible and well‐behaved tenant. The precise tweaking of each of these elements affects the others, which illustrates the interplay of these concepts and, thereby, demonstrates the value of students achieving improved concept synthesis.
Concept synthesis is a negotiation teaching goal, which simulation design seems to achieve. Why does design enhance synthesis? David Crookall (2008: 161) illuminated its key features: “a) Design is concrete — you can touch the results; b) it is creative — you develop an object, and c) it is involving — you develop understanding in a passionate and intimate way.” Duke (2008) also noted these features in a chapter on the simulation design process, in which he identified a sequence of learning stages underlying this process.
The first stage, referred to as “generating the conceptual map,” may be the most important stage in the development of synthesis skills. In this stage, the designer seeks to determine what is to be conveyed (themes, issues, and problems) by the simulation and how that message will be transmitted to the role players. These questions are answered by producing the conceptual map with text and graphics, gauging the correspondence between the map and the reality, ascertaining an appropriate level of abstraction, and implementing the map through simulation construction. This process encourages designers, first, to view the system in a more abstract way and, second, to work out the details (including role definitions and assignments) for play — thereby capturing Crookall’s features of creativity, involvement, and concreteness at a whole‐system level, as the designer carries around a mental web of the elements and concepts involved as well as the connectedness and tensions among them.
Greenblat (2000: 93) specifically recognized synthesis as a reward of designing: “… a gaming‐simulation may be a more productive way of conceptualizing elements and relationships, whether one’s purpose is teaching or refinement of theory.” (See also Greenblat and Duke 1975; the authors particularly reinforce this point in Part Two.) In Greenblat’s (1972: 34) more recent book on game design, she claimed that design “primarily (satisfies) the need for systemic understanding — seeing the connections among roles, goals, resources, constraints, and contingencies.” She adds, “Thus you may design your gaming simulation to instruct others, but you learn a great deal yourself!”
While there is no lack of material concerning best practices in conducting simulations, we are just beginning to understand what might comprise successful simulation design activities. To be precise, while the literature does provide insights into which design processes produce quality simulations, the measure of quality is the simulation’s efficacy for engaging and teaching participants. Having suggested that student design of simulations is an effective learning method in its own right, however, we need to explore the different ways this can be implemented in teaching and training. How can simulation design be used in the most effective and efficient way possible? This exploration should address several questions.
What instructions should student‐designers be given?
What types of scenarios should students be asked to design?
Is this activity best conducted in class or as an at‐home assignment?
Should students design scenarios alone or work with others?
What would be the costs and benefits of combining a design activity with a role‐play activity (e.g., having students role‐play scenarios designed by their classmates)?
How can teachers help students design quality simulations?
In deciding on the best place to start, it seemed to us that if we could figure out what it is, precisely, about the design process that promotes synthesis, we would be best able to tailor design exercises and instructions to allow students to benefit from a synthesis‐enhancing experience. Therefore, in follow‐on experiments, we focused on discovering those elements of simulation design that seemed to promote concept synthesis. By conducting these experiments, we were able to answer the first and second of the questions posed above and to develop suggestions regarding some of the others.
Highlighting Concept Synthesis
Our first step was to explore whether synthesis might be affected by explicit priming; such priming was not done in the earlier experiments. Does highlighting the importance of incorporating relationships among the concepts increase the extent of synthesis achieved in the exercise? Can the degree of synthesis achieved in the earlier experiments be improved? Of course, these questions are one sided, suggesting that priming should result either in improvement or in no difference. A two‐sided question could also be posed: does priming actually decrease the degree of synthesis achieved? Conceivably, priming, by focusing designers’ attention on a particular activity rather than on a whole‐picture view of negotiation, could backfire and result in diminished synthesis. We therefore investigated these alternative hypotheses, namely, that priming either improves or hinders synthetic thinking.
The Value of Describing “Real‐Life” Situations
We needed to take into account that concept synthesis does not occur in a vacuum; it is not the only thing going on in the simulation design process. Other factors may be at play, with one element being the type of scenario students design. In our early experiments, we noted that some designers created scenarios that reflected their own real‐life experiences; others chose to craft situations that were more generic, unrelated to their own experience. This mirrors approaches taken by veteran simulation‐designers. Some prefer to research real‐life situations and have students conduct simulations in which the factual background provided to students as well as the delineation of their interests and goals reflect those of the original, real‐world case. Other designers prefer to invent fictional scenarios that they are free to manipulate to stress the particular concepts they intend the simulation to bring to light. Many designers may take an approach combining elements of these two poles.
Which approach is more likely to encourage concept synthesis for student‐designers? We referred to these two approaches using the distinction made between situated and nonsituated learning. By situated we mean that personal experience is used as a referent for scenario design; nonsituated means relying on knowledge about negotiation not rooted in personal experience. The former has been shown to enhance concrete (situation‐specific) learning and is promoted in the context of on‐the‐job training programs. The latter is regarded as being beneficial for concept learning and is promoted in the context of academic education (see Klatsky and Reder 1998).
The difference between the impacts of situated or nonsituated scenarios on concept learning has implications for simulation design; our hypothesis was that concept learning is enhanced by the process of designing nonsituated scenarios. To evaluate it, as well as the previous hypotheses regarding priming, we conducted the following experiment.
Comparing Situated and Non‐Situated, Primed and Unprimed
A 2 × 2 experimental design consisted of four combinations of these variables: instructions with and without priming were crossed with situated and nonsituated instructions. The priming condition asked designers to “consider the relationships between the three elements (alternatives, time pressure, and power).” The situated designers were asked to “choose a negotiation situation in which you were personally involved.” The instructor orally reinforced these instructions. No other changes were made from the design condition in the original experiments that had compared role playing to designing.
The results for both variables were weak. With regard to the priming variable, the possibility of a ceiling effect was raised: design activities without priming may maximize concept learning; there may be limited room for further improvement. But we decided to conduct another experiment that entailed a stronger manipulation of the priming variable. Designers primed for synthesis were therefore given the following instructions:
Consider how you might craft your scenario such that these relationships could emerge and influence the way the simulation develops during role play. Please make this a priority in your design. A good simulation, for the purposes of this simulation writing exercise, will be one which helps role players to understand the interplay among the three ideas. Their actions should be affected by this interplay.
These instructions were reinforced orally by the lecturer.
The results of this experiment ruled out the ceiling effect and displayed the advantages of strong priming for concept synthesis. Strong priming produced across‐the‐board findings similar to those obtained in the original comparison of designers with role players. The strong designer priming exaggerated the differences further, when compared with the earlier role play and control conditions. Encouraging designers to focus attention on relationships among the concepts improved learning. In addition, designers primed with these instructions were found to be strongly aware of the connection between conceptual relationships and learning. Interestingly, in follow‐up retention testing, we found that the advantages of strong priming were even more significant than in our immediate assessment, indicating the effects of strong priming on concept retention and concept synthesis retention and reducing the likelihood that the enhanced synthesis was due to the demand characteristics of the assignment.
The strength of these findings was enhanced by the results obtained from a comparison between the primed condition in this experiment and the unprimed condition in our first round of experiments (Druckman and Ebner 2012). This comparison of learning between these conditions indicated that the primed designers in this experiment learned the concepts better than those in the earlier study.
These findings provide an answer to the first question we posed, namely, whether instructions for successful design activities should incorporate explicit and repeated priming. They also provide further insight for teachers into how to incorporate this method into their teaching. Having reinforced the original findings regarding the advantages of simulation design for concept synthesis, and having shown that the degree of synthesis can be tweaked by teacher intervention, it would appear that to take full advantage of the method, simulation design should be used to teach sets of concepts, rather than individual concepts. In our experiments, as we have noted, students were tasked to incorporate three concepts in their scenarios — alternatives, power, and time pressure. Teachers can choose any set of concepts (e.g., culture, emotions, and integrative agreements); a variety of concepts can be drawn from the research summarized by Daniel Druckman and Victor Robinson’s (1971) sixteen thematic narratives.
Regarding the second question on the simulation’s subject matter and its relationship to students’ own experiences, we discovered no differences in learning outcomes between the two types of scenarios. As a result, it might often be best to tell students to choose whichever they prefer, presuming that this flexibility would enhance student motivation.
We can address some of the other questions posed based on our experience with running the experiments, although the following insights were not derived from experimental findings.
Should Designers Work by Themselves or in Pairs?
When exercises were conducted in each of these modalities, results indicated that concept learning seems to be unaffected by whether students teamed up or worked on their own. The comparisons suggest, however, that task motivation and creativity are enhanced when designers work in pairs. On a practical level, of course, teamwork adds a coordination dimension that may increase the time needed to complete the exercise (and frustration, in the event that something goes wrong). Both formats might be offered, leaving the decision up to the students.
Should the Exercise Be Conducted in Class or Outside?
Short exercises aimed at targeting a limited number of concepts are quite suitable for in‐class work. The experimental task discussed earlier, targeting three concepts, was completed in an hour, not including time for debriefing. Writing a simulation, however, is a creative task that requires a suitable amount of time and a certain frame of mind. As a result, the wider the scope of the assignment, the more appropriate it would be to let students design simulations on their own time, perhaps as a take‐home assignment. We have used this assignment in a distance‐learning course in which students completed work at their own pace with good results. We have also conducted asynchronous online exercises, allowing students to complete their work over several days. These longer assignments are suitable as well for longer course‐end projects. (For more on conducting these exercises at a distance, and on using design exercises for assessment purposes, see Ebner and Druckman 1974)
Should Design Exercises Be Combined with Role Plays?
The use of both role‐play participation and role‐play design in the classroom can have complementary and synergistic learning benefits. Role playing provides practice in implementing tactics while designing enhances concept learning. Both are essential elements of negotiation education. Additionally, role‐playing simulations designed by their classmates might have the added effect of enhancing students’ comfort with the scenarios and their understanding of the contexts. They also offer students the opportunity to incorporate their own concerns and experiences into the simulation design, broadening the range of their practice beyond the traditional, transactional scenarios utilized by many teachers (see Tyler and Cukier 2012).
Using student‐designed role plays for class simulations goes beyond use of the design exercise on its own — fundamentally, this method requires that a negotiation educator adopt an approach that places the learner at the center, not just as a vessel to be filled but also as a source of information and knowledge including information about how he or she can best be taught (see Nelken, McAdoo, and Manwaring 2003). While we have conducted design exercises sequenced with follow‐on role play by students in various forms, we did not evaluate the impacts of sequencing. The potential for increasing concept understanding, or more likely, retention, by having designers role‐play simulations designed by other designer teams is a topic for further research.
Simulation Quality
We recommend assigning simulation design exercises only after students have participated as role players in simulations. This provides them with a basic understanding of simulation structure and design issues. Teachers might also provide students with reading material on simulation design or on the topic of simulation design’s value for learning. We also recommend providing students with an explicit set of instructions for design (see, e.g., the instructions provided in Ebner and Druckman 1974). We note, however, that in our experiments, we did not assess designers’ simulation quality, only their learning outcomes. Regardless of their skill at storytelling and design, students’ concept learning, motivation, and retention seem to be enhanced by simulation design exercises.
Conclusion
Simulation has been shown to engage and to interest students more than conventional classroom learning. The growth trend that the use of simulation in negotiation education has enjoyed over the past few decades will continue, both in traditional pedagogic frameworks as well as in new forms of learner‐focused education. Teaching through simulations, however, does not provide the full range of learning benefits assumed by many of the method’s proponents. Simulation, used in an incorrect way or setting, also runs the risk of adverse outcomes. A fresh look at whether, when, and how to employ simulations is clearly needed. Through careful consideration of questions of efficacy and suitability — together with an enhanced arsenal of tools for design and conduct of simulations — teachers can more effectively use simulation to promote student learning in negotiation courses.
Although unsubstantiated by survey data, our informal discussions with colleagues suggest that design exercises are catching on as useful class exercises. A number of colleagues in the simulation and negotiation communities are “experimenting” with design as a complement to their role plays. By augmenting the exercises with questions about the experience, we will accumulate evaluations from a wide variety of types of courses in different cultural settings. We also routinely perform such evaluations each year in our own negotiation courses. These evaluations will provide additional information about the learning and motivation effects of simulation design exercises.
Notes
In this article, we have used the terms “simulation” and “role play” to refer to experiential‐learning activities commonly dubbed “simulations,” “games,” “simulation‐games” and “role play.” We use the term “role players” to refer to participants in a simulation activity who play roles based on information and instructions they are given, such as in the experiment described later in the article. For in‐depth discussions of definitional issues, see Greenblat (1981a) and Crookall, Oxford, and Saunders (1995).
An example of a free simulation collection is on the website of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Section of the Association of American Law Schools at http://www.law.missouri.edu/drle/teaching_materials.htm. Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation Clearinghouse, the Dispute Resolution Research Center at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and the Center for Dispute Resolution at Willamette University School of Law offer negotiation simulations for a fee. See http://www.pon.harvard.edu/shop/home/; http://www.negotiationexercises.com/; and http://www.willamette.edu/modules/simbank/login.cgi.
This competition not only provides educators with several peer‐reviewed simulations every year but also translates the winning simulations into Spanish and Mandarin for wider dissemination. See http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/parcc/eparcc/Simulations_Main_Page/.
For a recent experiment that touched on issues of concept‐learning and skill‐building among other issues, see Andrew and Meligrana (2010).
While this section focused primarily on considerations for simulation design, many of the same considerations should guide teachers in choosing predesigned material for a particular course or training. In general, teachers preferring to use predesigned material, rather than design their own, would do well to refresh their knowledge of the wide range of material available on the market for off‐the‐shelf use, as discussed in notes 2 and 3. Given such an array of material, teachers now have the opportunity to suit simulations to particular social or cultural contexts, or to stress particular negotiation situations or elements.
The authors have been using e‐mail platforms for simulation in their semester‐long negotiation classes. In addition, we are using this method for expanding our comparisons between designers and role players. Students are divided randomly into designer or role‐playing pairs. Communicating only through e‐mail, the designs are developed during the course of a week. The role‐playing pairs then implement their classmates’ designs, through e‐mail communication, during a second week. Results to date on the quality of the designs, student motivation, and concept learning are encouraging.
Michael Moffitt has provided a list of practical suggestions on how to combine simulation with use of video (see O’Neil 2008).
A question can be raised about whether amateur designs provide a quality learning experience for role players. It may well be that simulations designed by professionals would provide a better learning experience. It is also the case that the designers were amateurs whose learning experience would have been enhanced by prior design opportunities. Symmetrical experience provides an apples‐to‐apples experimental comparison. It would have been more problematic to match amateur designers with role players who implement professional designs or to compare experienced designers with amateur role players. Further research is needed to evaluate relative learning benefits from amateur versus professional designs and role plays.
The questionnaire addressed learning in two ways: perceived learning (or, how do students evaluate their understanding of a concept) and demonstrated learning (students’ explanation of a concept as assessed by an expert reader). In our 2008 article, we discuss the reasoning behind adopting this dual form of measurement and also discuss some interesting discrepancies between the two sets of data. Motivation was only measured by subjective means, but we probed this issue from various directions (e.g., satisfaction with outcome and desire to engage in such a task again).
These findings are reported here in brief. For a more precise presentation of the statistical significance of each finding, see the original article.
It should be noted, however, that data were not available for comparing role players with the controls on retention variables. It would be interesting to ascertain whether role players show better retention than baseline controls. If so, this would provide partial support for earlier findings on retention advantages from role play.
A follow‐up study might compare students designing role‐plays with students conducting preexisting role plays, written by more experienced authors, in which the same elements were stressed.