Drama Teacher as Game Master: the development of a new model of online Drama for learning.

As the world shifts from a “knowledge” economy to a “creative” economy, there will be significant changes needed in the way we frame education and learning. Traditional education models are likely to become less relevant and less useful in a system that demands more cost-effective distributed network models, personalised and yet socially-constructed learning. In the light of changing economic paradigms and shifting consumer/learner/creator expectations, it seems that online delivery/instructional approaches are going to become more prevalent and necessary.

Already some commentators are claiming that “simulation” will be the only way to learn…. And in some countries the hard-won battles of arts educators to include arts subjects in the curriculum are being overturned by bureaucratic and economic rationalisation. Drama has much to offer a “wholistic” education model both in terms of creative practice and pedagogical method. Simulation, to my thinking, is a limited model – while it has some immediacy, modules are replayable and adaptive, and it engages a superficial level of roleplay, it is still largely a single learner model, based on a set of predetermined operational outcomes. Simulation facilitates particular types of skills training, it can test the degree to which learning has become automatic, and it can generate a set of standardised results/reports.

I am wanting to articulate a new model of online Drama education that draws on a range of perspectives that may well reflect the needs and shifting demands of the changing economy.

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