Participating in an Online Role-Play Debate

The role I created for the online role play was "Dale Mikkalson, School Board Member, Neutral." The name comes from my Junior High School Band Director, a man whom I admired and respected, a man somewhat reserved at times, but otherwise very friendly and kind, inquisitive, sensitive, thorough, always available, and very encouraging. You could show up to his house, on a Sunday, with a dented trombone slide, and he'd gladly take it from your hand, take it downstairs to his workshop, and straighten it out for you. And you got the idea that he didn't mind at all--even though, inside, he might have been really steamed!

What I think I changed about this basic characterization is that Dale in the role play is probably a bit more liberal, a bit more of a "rabble-rouser," than the original model. He is definitely more extroverted, more inquisitive. He really wants to get to the heart of the debate, but being on the school board and probably also busy with a job, family, and other community activities, he sees himself as not having the time to do any research of his own, so he's really relying on the research of others.

And he definitely wants to stir things up. For example, he takes on Arv, another school-board member, head on, challenging him to avoid campaigning during the "debate" and to avoid the "business model" of education. (And here's where I think I lost some character consistency throughout my posts: I wasn't exactly clear about whether Dale's seat was up for re-election or not, and Dale is awfully concerned about finances.) Another example is that Dale "goes off" on the Katherine Kersten article in the Star Tribune, an article mentioned by the third school-board member, and tries to bring in to the debate the tension between "liberals" and "conservatives" and a possible hidden conservative agenda in all this talk about single-sex classrooms. Dale's purpose here was not to side-track the debate, I don't think, but to stir things up a bit, perhaps to encourage other characters to respond, if they didn't want to respond to the "research-heavy" posts. School board, and city council, meetings are always like this: There's always someone there, either on the board or in the audience, who likes to bring up tangential issues, either to make things more colorful or to deepen or broaden the debate.

Instead of long posts, Dale read everything but responded briefly and frequently, asking questions, pointing out some trends or observations, and perhaps very subtly indicating that he's probably opposed to this proposal of single-sex classrooms, if for no other reason than no one has explained how much this is going to cost or how it's going to work. Dale is very pragmatic and wants to know the "logistics." A typical school-board member perspective, I think. And, from the assignment of the role play, Dale, as a school-board member, was supposed to be neutral, so I also think this influenced my approach to the character.

In reflecting on the role play so far, I agree with the other student who has already posted her reflection on the Ning. I don't think the "conversation" sounded authentic. It seemed piecemeal, bit-by-bit, rather than interactive, and this might be due, in part, to the asynchronous tool we're using. But, in addition, alliances didn't seem to be formed; characters did not often recall or quote other characters. The other student was, I sensed, frustrated that no one else had responded to her posts, and her posts were good: well researched, well thought-out, and well presented. I agree with her that our students would also be frustrated if this happened to them. They would put all this time and effort into researching and crafting a position, and then they wouldn't get the acknowledgement or satisfaction or affirmation of someone else responding to them, either to counter-argue or to advance their own argument. And I think this would ultimately be deflating/defeating for students.

I wonder if this other student is also right, that readers might skip her post, and others like it, if the posts were too long or "too full of research." Here's where Dale might have some advantage, in that all his posts were very short.

I think the two role-play characters with the most "power" right now are, interestingly, on opposite sides of the debate. Con Expert (Amy) and Pro Teacher (Brent) seem to have the most power--and maybe I shouldn't say "power" but "credibility" (not that the other posts/characters are not credible). But I wonder if this also has to do with the frequency of their posts: they seem more actively involved in the role-play debate at this point.

Finally, I'm not sure how Dale is going to vote tonight. For lack of any good explanations about finances, lawsuits, hiring more teachers, and scheduling, he might side with the "cons" and vote to keep things as is. In terms of my own personal beliefs, Dale's vote might be opposite of how I would vote myself. In terms of if my own personal beliefs on this issue changed over the course of the role play, I'm still thinking about that.