ABSTRACT
Some professional roles need to be learned and practiced outside the actual setting where they will be performed, because making big mistakes can be costly or even life threatening. Much learning comes from failure, and learning through virtual realities allows students to see if they can use what they know and, more importantly, see the consequences of failure in a safe learning environment rather than in a real-life setting with much at stake. Role play, dramatic scenarios, and simulations and games are the most common techniques used for bridging the real world of performance and the virtual world created for practice. Role play is an activity where a limited number of students, usually two or three, take on specifically assigned and well-defined roles and act out an encounter that involves some goal or problem.
