Case Study: Using AI Role Play to Practise Sustainability Persuasion at Work

Sustainable Change Management is a new, 15 credit course that is delivered across the Edinburgh, Dubai, and Malaysia campuses. It is predominately undertaken by year 4 undergraduate students on the MA (Hons) International Business Management programme.

The course develops students’ understanding of the growing need for sustainable practices across industries, alongside key change management theories and models.

For the course assessments, students conduct a double materiality analysis aligned with current sustainability reporting requirements for a chosen organisation. This analysis enables them to identify priority environmental, social and governance issues, risks and opportunities, and to design a detailed sustainability-focused change initiative.

Across two tutorials, students also design and practise a role play scenario, in which a change leader seeks to persuade stakeholders with different perspectives. Guided by a structured meeting scenario and relevant change management models, students work in small groups to design and undertake these interactions. Following the group role play, students are introduced to the LinkedIn Learning AI Role-Play tool, which enables them to practise professional persuasive, sustainability-focused change conversations. The tool provides personalised feedback on students’ persuasion techniques, which are then discussed in academic tutor led classes.

Top tips for others interested in adopting or adapting this approach

• Access the AI Role-Play Tool via the University’s subscription to LinkedIn Learning.
• Provide students with detailed scenario prompts for use in the AI Role-Play tool, to support their experiential learning activity.

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) addressed

Depending on the scenario, relevant UN SDGs are explored through learning tasks.