Week 8 Lab: Friendship and Group Communication

A Lab role-playing a stalled apology, then writing up a friendship mix-up as an incident report

Before the Lab#

Think of one message — sent or received — that sat unanswered for at least a day. You won’t have to show it to anyone, but keep the details in mind: this week’s role-play and incident report both draw on it.

In the Lab#

Introduction. Quick round first: did your follow-up line from last week get a real answer, or just move the “yeah, good” stall one exchange further down the conversation? Then, this week’s topic — last week’s ambiguous social cue had to be read in real time, face to face; this week the cue is a message left unanswered for three days, with no tone of voice or expression to read at all, just the fact of silence.

Activity 1 (groups of 4): The unanswered message. One student plays a friend who sent a reasonable message three days ago and got no reply. Another plays the person who left them on read. The rest of the group watches and calls out the exact moment an apology goes wrong — for example, “I’m sorry you felt that way, but—”.

Discussion: What’s the earliest point the apology could have been saved?

Activity 2 (pairs): Incident report. Write up a real or invented mix-up between friends as a short report: what was agreed, what actually happened, and the actual reason — traced to a specific chat, whoever routed the messages, or a step with no one responsible for it, never to any one person’s character. One other student reviews your “what went wrong” line, since that’s the hardest part to get right without pinning it on someone.

Wrap-up: Best example goes up as this week’s model answer.

Afterwards#

Propose one structural fix your friend group could adopt: a single channel, a rotating organiser, a standing weekly slot. It does not need to be adopted, only proposed.