A taxonomy for simulation learning designs: implications for repositories

Project EnROLE2 has been a two year $200,000 project funded by the Australian Learning & Teaching Council (ALTC) to encourage uptake of online role based learning environments, with particular focus on what is commonly referred to as role play. Role play is widely acknowledged to be a powerful teaching technique in face to face, blended and online teaching contexts and has been previously singled out as an example of good practice by ALTC predecessors: CAUT, CUTSD and AUTC. The first known example in Australia, and possibly the world, was Middle Eastern Politics Simulation by Andrew Vincent & John Shepherd which started at The University of Melbourne in 1990, continued when they moved to different universities in another state in 1994, and is also run by other universities (see Vincent & Shepherd, 1998). MEPS’ 20 year history is well documented in books and videos (for example Alexander, 2005; Wills, 2009).