Instructional designers transformed in-person negotiation role-plays into asynchronous online exercises for professional learners. These offer hands-on practice with real-world scenarios, branching paths, and key decisions. This approach provides more opportunities for practice than traditional in-person activities and delivers focused, efficient learning tailored to the needs of busy professionals.

Join us as we explore the transformation of in-person negotiation role-plays into engaging online exercises for professional learners. The adaptive exercises simulate real-world negotiations, allowing learners to engage in structured deal-making, receive realistic counter-offers, and develop rapport with a negotiation counterpart, all within a flexible digital environment.

Time-constrained professionals require solutions that not only build critical skills but also do so in a format that is adaptable to their schedules. Traditional, in-person negotiation role-plays have long been recognized as an effective tool for developing negotiation skills, but they are limited by logistical constraints, such as scheduling conflicts, limited time for practice and iteration, and the availability of instructors to provide essential guidance and feedback.

Our approach transforms in-person negotiation exercises into dynamic, structured, and engaging online experiences. This approach addresses the needs of busy professionals while maintaining much of the depth and complexity of the traditional role-plays. Gamification features – including badge-based feedback – serve to enhance engagement, reinforce key concepts, and motivate learners to explore different paths as they repeat the exercise multiple times. A flexible, online format ensures learners can practice critical skills at their own pace, benefiting from real-time guidance that helps them improve with each iteration.

At the heart of the online negotiation exercises is the use of curated learning paths. Unlike unstructured, in-person or synchronous role-play activities, which can leave learners to navigate a wide range of possible interpersonal interactions, our tailored exercises are carefully designed to guide learners through a progression of scenarios that are aligned with targeted learning outcomes.

The learning paths are built around key negotiation concepts, such as building rapport, understanding the counterpart’s interests, making and responding to offers, and adapting to changing circumstances. Each path is structured to ensure that learners master these skills in a logical sequence, starting with foundational concepts and moving toward more advanced strategies. Each exercise covers different learning outcomes, from creating and claiming value in multi-issue deals to leveraging your power in complex multi-party negotiations. By guiding learners through a structured series of decision points, the exercises ensure that each participant can gain practice with a wide spectrum of negotiation techniques. After each exercise, learners watch in-depth debriefing videos that provide instructor feedback on the different decision points they encountered.

One of the most distinctive features of our approach is the tailored feedback that learners receive based on their negotiation decisions. As participants move through the exercise, they are provided with detailed, real-time feedback that helps them understand the impact of their choices. This personalized feedback is integral to the learning process, as it allows learners to reflect on their decisions and adjust their approach in future rounds. For instance, if a learner makes an overly aggressive offer early in the negotiation, they might receive feedback explaining how this could damage the relationship with the counterpart or increase the likelihood of deadlock. Alternatively, if a learner makes an overly conciliatory offer, the feedback might suggest exploring more assertive strategies to reach a better outcome.

In this session, we present a transformative approach to negotiation training. By offering structured learning paths, real-time feedback, and opportunities for iterative learning, our online negotiation exercises provide a powerful solution for developing critical negotiation skills in ways that meet the needs of today’s time-constrained professionals.