Role play: a teaching strategy that adds fun in learning

Background: There are many strategies used by nurse educators to ensure that students of the health professions develop professional competence. Although a number of experiential strategies have been introduced but still didactic styles of delivering material is still in use. It provides an efficient delivery style but it does not promote critical thinking. Experiential approaches used in nursing education include role play, simulation, laboratory projects. Role play has a competitive element that does not exist in didactic lecturing, simulations or practical exercises. Methods: This paper will focus the use of a role play as a teaching strategy to support classroom learning in the health sciences nursing education .It will also discuss the literature related to role play and our experiences of using the role play as a teaching learning strategy Results: The nursing literature highlights many reasons for using role play as a teaching strategy, including the promotion of active learning, encouragement for critical thinking, the value of fun and excitement in learning, and replication of real-life situations. The use of games generally enhances student enjoyment and may improve long-term retention of information Conclusions: The use of Role Play Games, can promote the development of users’ creativity, autonomy, responsibility and other decision related skills. The use of these games for learning is an immediate consequence of the need to put learners in a context where they must develop their knowledge in an effective way Keywords: Role playing, nursing education, Learners motivation teaching, experiential learnin