How four students might be represented in online discussions in Cryss Brunner's class. Place your cursor over each photograph to see what their actual identities might be. The photographs of the assigned identities are from the University of Minnesota Images Library. The photographs of students A, C, and D were taken by Tom Foley, ©2002 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota, and the one of student B was taken by Jonathan Chapman, ©2001 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota; the actual identity photographs are of our staff members.

At the fall 2003 TEL seminar on Problem-Based Learning Activities, Cryss Brunner thanked the staff of the Digital Media Center (DMC) for helping her with her experiential simulations project: "Thank you DMC for all the incredible [technology-enhanced learning resources] we have [available at the DMC]. . . . We are getting a huge bang for our buck."

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Technologically Delivered Experiential Simulations Case Study

C. Cryss Brunner is an associate professor of educational administration in the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD). She teaches courses such as:

• EdPA 5322: School Superintendency;
• EdPA 5001: Formal Organizations; and
• EdPA 5080: Women and Leadership.

To help her students explore power, identity, and decision-making issues, she wanted to situate them in realistic problem-solving environments. She decided to assign students gender/racial/class/positional identities unlike the ones to which they are accustomed (e.g., women may be men; whites may be people of color) and immerse them in virtual policy forming situations that illustrate how leaders' perceptions and understandings of others' identities shape the way they enhance or restrict participation in decision making.

Instructional Goals

She hoped to:

• teach content that would help build knowledge skills;
• foster the development of collaboration skills; and
• promote deeper learning.

She also hoped these activities would enable her to

• test if Experiential Simulations© help students examine their conceptions of and assumptions about power and stereotypes and their communication and decision-making practices;
• test if Experiential Simulations© help students to use more participatory and collaborative communication and decision-making practices;
• test the effectiveness of Experiential Simulations© as a delivery system for content in other courses;
• revise and refine the leadership development model for large-scale application;
• develop Experiential Simulations© that meet practitioner-identified needs, including interactivity, hands-on-application, technological richness, and links between content and practice; and
• analyze and present future research and development results to national audiences.

Technology Strategies

At first, she asked students to make up identities for themselves when they introduced themselves in class. However, she couldn't make someone appear to be of another race, or short rather than tall, etc., so she met with consultants from the Digital Media Center and decided to use technology to create pseudo-identities for the students by following the patented process below:

1. She interviewed each student and showed him or her how to use WebCT course management software to participate in live chat discussions.
2. She assigned the students a problem they had to solve in a group using course content, and then had them discuss the problem by typing text during a live chat session. They could not use personal pronouns or refer to personal experiences or locations, and she encouraged English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students to spellcheck their messages before posting them.
3. She asked the students to privately answer self-reflective questions such as, "What do you think your classmates look like?"
4. She posted photographs of the students and volunteer actors on a WebCT course Web site. Each photograph was identifed only by a letter.
5. The students participated in another live chat session, but this time each student saw an actual photograph of him or herself, and photographs of actors posing as their real classmates.
6. She asked the students to privately answer self-reflective questions such as, "What made you think Student D was female?"
7. She posted video introductions of the students and volunteer actors on the WebCT site. Each clip was identifed only by a letter.
8. Each student viewed an actual video clip of him or herself, and clips of actors posing as their real classmates.
9. The students answered self-reflective questions.
10. Finally, the students saw the real photographs of their classmates along with the fake ones other students had seen of them.
11. They participated in a third chat session and answered more self-reflective questions.

Learning Outcomes

Brunner has assigned these activities in five classes so far. She reports that the activities "create 'real' reactions in students that are visceral and thus, profound." The students realize how they did or did not collaborate well, which can be very "rankling," but they also learn about themselves and about power, identity, and decision making on a much deeper level than they would otherwise. "It's stunning to them," Brunner notes.

For example:

• One African-American woman assumed she wasn't being heard because of her race, but after seeing the photograph of her assigned identity, she decided she really wasn't heard because she didn't communicate well.
• A white male admitted that he discovered during the experience that he is a bigot.
• Another woman said she was so ashamed because the experience made her realize she had been bullying others and that her behavior created a model for others in her school district and for her own children.
• ESL students reported that they had never participated in class discussions here so much.
• One student who particpated in two rounds of masked identity discussions was initially very shy but gained a tremendous amount of communication skills the first time. The second time, she was selected to be the narrator of her group's presentation because she had learned she could do it.

Brunner's process has been so successful that it has been patented and her materials have been copyrighted.

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