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Designing digital artifacts is not a linear, straightforward process. This is particularly true when applying a user-centered design approach, or co-design, with users who are unable to participate in the design process. Although the reduced participation of a particular user group may harm the end result, the literature on solving this issue is sparse. In this article, proxy design is outlined as a method for involving a user group as proxy users to speak on behalf of a group that is difficult to reach. The article investigates the following research question: How can roleplaying be embedded in co-design to engage users as proxies on behalf of those who are unable to represent themselves?

The article presents a design ethnography spanning three years at a cancer rehabilitation clinic, where digital artifacts were designed to be used collaboratively by nurses and patients. The empirical data were analyzed using content analysis and consisted of 20 observation days at the clinic, six proxy design workshops, 21 telephone consultations between patients and nurses, and log data from the digital artifact.

The article shows that simulated consultations, with nurses roleplaying as proxies for patients ignited and initiated the design process and enabled an efficient in-depth understanding of patients. Moreover, the article reveals how proxy design as a method further expanded the design. The study findings illustrate: (1) proxy design as a method for initiating design, (2) proxy design as an embedded element in co-design and (3) six design guidelines that should be considered when engaging in proxy design.

The main contribution is the conceptualization of proxy design as a method that can ignite and initiate the co-design process when important users are unreachable, vulnerable or unable to represent themselves in the co-design process. More specifically, based on the empirical findings from a design ethnography that involved nurses as proxy users speaking on behalf of patients, the article shows that roleplaying in proxy design is a fitting way of initiating the design process, outlining proxy design as an embedded element of co-design.

The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the learning effectiveness and engagement of blended learning tools in a management course of negotiation skills. The study addresses the dilemma brought to light through literature regarding the learning effectiveness of roleplays as a teaching tool in negotiation training. The study compares the impact of traditional roleplays vis-à-vis roleplays fused with blended tools on learner's performance. The endeavour is to investigate the learning effectiveness of traditional tools (roleplay simulation and lecture) vs blended learning tools (flipped classroom, massive open online courses, independent study fused with roleplay simulation).

The current study delves into a negotiation course to conduct experimental research comparing traditional and blended learning tools. The total number of students who participated in this study were 80.

The findings indicate the improved learning effectiveness of blended learning tools vis-à-vis traditional tools. Generation Z students were more engaged with the use of blended learning tools and enjoyed the experience. The study recommends blended learning tools for educators aiming to transition from traditional learning to interactive learning to create experiential classrooms.

Limited sample size and single group experimentation are some limitations of the study. Some latent flaws in the implementation of roleplay simulations in negotiation training were revealed during the study. The study focuses solely on a negotiations course taught to management students.

The study would help academic institutes to comply with the pressing need to impart experiential learning in the classroom. The research would act as a bridge between the industry expectations and academia deliverables.

The study would help academic institutes to comply with the pressing need to impart experiential learning through blended learning in the classroom. The research would act as a bridge between the industry expectations and academia deliverables.

The study addresses the dilemma in the literature, which, on the one hand, upholds the learning effectiveness of roleplays as a teaching tool, and on the other hand, suggests that roleplays have lost their applicability due to advancement in students' exposure to technology. The study in itself is unique, as it addresses the need for higher student engagement in the classroom.

This paper aims to describe the critical literacies of high school students engaged in a youth participatory action research (YPAR) project focused on a roleplaying game, Dungeons and Dragons, in a queer-led afterschool space. The paper illustrates how youth critique and resist unjust societal norms while simultaneously envisioning queer utopian futures. Using a queer theory framework, the authors consider how youth performed disidentifications and queer futurity.

This study is a discourse analysis of approximately 85 hours of audio collected over one year.

Youth engaged in deconstructive critique, disidentifications and queer futurity in powerful enactments of critical literacies that involved simultaneous resistance, subversion, imagination and hope as youth envisioned queer utopian world-building through their fantasy storytelling. Youth acknowledged the injustice of the present while radically envisioning a utopian future.

This study offers an empirical grounding for critical literacies centered in queer theory and explores how youth engage with critical literacies in collaboratively co-authored texts. The authors argue that queering critical literacies potentially moves beyond deconstructive critique while simultaneously opening spaces for resistance, imagination and utopian world-making through linguistic and narrative-based tools.

The benefits of experiential exercises for making conceptual material more dynamic and relevant, thus enhancing students' learning and developing their skills, are well documented. Presented here is an easy‐to‐administer roleplay that enables students to integrate a wide range of concepts covered in a typical organizational behavior course. Participants assume the roles of members of a food services department attending their weekly staff meeting. At the meeting, the new department manager announces that the previous manager has just resigned Each roleplayer has a different perspective on the problem‐riddled department, and none has a complete set of relevant information. Because the roleplayers have engaging issues, students participate actively, practicing managerial behaviors as they experience various organizational phenomena. An assessment of the exercise indicates its usefulness for developing students' skills, imparting an appreciation for the realities of organizational life, and provoking introspection and self‐learning.

Reports on the success and rapid growth of Roleplay UK, which has established itself as the leading supplier of professional role players throughout the British Isles. Clients include large insurance companies, which are currently obliged to assess all their salesforces to determine their competence and potential to achieve the Financial Planning Certificate Level 3 ‐ compulsory by July 1997. Professional role players have proved ideal in making the assessment processes realistic. Gives some opinions of personnel professionals who have used the services of the company.

This paper aims to provide an experiential learning exercise that develops student skills in assertive communication and listening in the context of dysfunctional group projects. It offers iterative planning, roleplays and reflection. Variations incorporate additional practice, interim debriefing or multiple partners.

A scaffolded approach introduces assertiveness and listening. Students prepare and discuss feedback scripts for two scenarios about problematic team members, articulate perceptions of blame (to call attention to bias) and identify listening tactics. They receive additional scenarios with complementary roles to analyze individually and then practice with new partners. In one, they are assertive, and in the other, they are the dysfunctional group member.

The challenges represented by the scenarios resonate with students. Many are shocked by the difficulty of speaking assertively with “problem” group members and find the iterative practice helpful.

Students avoid directly addressing problems caused by peers or request instructor intervention. This iterative activity helps them close the knowing-doing gap by practicing assertive communication, feedback and listening within the context of realistic group project situations.

This activity develops learner confidence and capacity to handle similar situations. It incorporates valuable soft skills that are transferable to the workplace.

This activity draws on common problems caused by group members in college project teams. Learners develop scripts and listening approaches and practice assertive communication to achieve better group outcomes.

Play and playful literacies shape essential spaces for belonging, connection, transformation and joy: from embodied immersions into fantasy worlds, to the creation of interest-led groups overflowing with varied knowledges and identities, and the disruption of societal hierarchies through roleplayed restorying. Yet, theorizations delineating playful possibilities – while plentiful and varied – are often rigidly constructed in relation to neoliberally/biopolitically motivated notions of value, use and productivity. Imbued with forms of modern power, play’s full flourishing has been regulated and quelled, particularly within the realm of education. This study, a literature review, seeks to defy this fatuous notion of a frivolous play.

Drawing from research within the fields of literacy and educational studies, the author centers playful methods commonly trivialized in contemporary discourse, including in global out-of-school spaces (e.g. gaming clubs, improvisational theater groups), with popular culture texts (e.g. picture books, digital fanfiction) and for older youth and adults.

This exploration of play’s potential across lifespans, formal/informal learning ecologies and worldwide contexts foregrounds its intrinsic nature and essential entwining with socio-culturally/materially mediated forms of knowledge and communication.

With a unique focus on the playful literacies emerging across ages, spaces and places, this review advocates a turn toward the imaginative, messy, uncontrollable worlds of play in future research and practice.

Using a newly compiled corpus module consisting of utterances from Asian learners during L2 English interviews, this study examined how Asian EFL learners' L1s (Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and Thai), their L2 proficiency levels (A2, B1 low, B1 upper and B2+) and speech task types (picture descriptions, roleplays and QA-based conversations) affected four aspects of vocabulary usage (number of tokens, standardized type/token ratio, mean word length and mean sentence length).

Four aspects concern speech fluency, lexical richness, lexical complexity and structural complexity, respectively.

Subsequent corpus-based quantitative data analyses revealed that (1) learner/native speaker differences existed during the conversation and roleplay tasks in terms of the number of tokens, type/token ratio and sentence length; (2) an L1 group effect existed in all three task types in terms of the number of tokens and sentence length; (3) an L2 proficiency effect existed in all three task types in terms of the number of tokens, type-token ratio and sentence length; and (4) the usage of high-frequency vocabulary was influenced more strongly by the task type and it was classified into four types: Type A vocabulary for grammar control, Type B vocabulary for speech maintenance, Type C vocabulary for negotiation and persuasion and Type D vocabulary for novice learners.

These findings provide clues for better understanding L2 English vocabulary usage among Asian learners during speech.

With the rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence (AI), it is important to consider how young people are making sense of these tools in their everyday lives. Drawing on critical postdigital approaches to learning and literacy, this study aims to center the experiences and perspectives of young people who encounter and experiment with generative AI in their daily writing practices.

This critical case study of one digital platform – Character.ai – brings together an adolescent and adult authorship team to inquire about the intertwining of young people’s playful and critical perspectives when writing on/with digital platforms. Drawing on critical walkthrough methodology (Light et al., 2018), the authors engage digital methods to study how the creative and “fun” uses of AI in youths’ writing lives are situated in broader platform ecologies.

The findings suggest experimentation and pleasure are key aspects of young people’s engagement with generative AI. The authors demonstrate how one platform works to capitalize on these dimensions, even as youth users engage critically and artfully with the platform and develop their digital writing practices.

This study highlights how playful experimentation with generative AI can engage young people both in pleasurable digital writing and in exploration and contemplation of platforms dynamics and structures that shape their and others’ literate activities. Educators can consider young people’s creative uses of these evolving technologies as potential opportunities to develop a critical awareness of how commercial platforms seek to benefit from their users.

This study contributes to the development of a critical and humanist research agenda around generative AI by centering the experiences, perspectives and practices of young people who are underrepresented in the burgeoning research devoted to AI and literacies.