How should I define my groups?

• Start by thinking about work flow. Putting certain roles into groups may make sense when those people will work together a lot, share similar resources, and have similar calendar events.
• Clearly define roles so that participants have both explicit activities assigned to them and unstructured time to work with other groups.

What roles should I include?

• Decision making bodies:
  • Simulations with one decision-making body provide opportunities to examine that body’s processes in depth.
  • Simulations that incorporate decision-making across multiple bodies allows participants to examine interactions between decision-making entities.
• Stakeholders. Group dynamics are richer and more complex as the number of stakeholder interests increase. Simulations tend to work best when there are numerous stakeholder interests and multiple plausible coalition combinations.
• Experts. Expert roles can be helpful, especially if participants have limited substantive knowledge, limited time for preparation, or if the problem has a high degree of technical, financial, or procedural complexity.
• Media. Including media roles is helpful in large, multi-period simulations in which other participants may struggle to keep track of the activities and decisions of other groups.

How should I design and assign roles?

• Use roles that stretch people. The most profound insights often come from playing roles whose interests diverge significantly from participants’ own or roles for which they have no prior experience.
• Use roles based on real people if possible. Simulations that assign participants to real people in decision-making roles and encourage participants to research and contact those real-world decision-makers provide a unique opportunity for participants to connect with actual decision makers.
• Use roles that demonstrate power dynamics, if that's an important learning objective for you.