Supporting and Advancing Online Dialogue Wiki: Summary

Leadership and dialogue
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Emergent leadership, Derek Chirnside

Servant leadership, by Robert Greenleaf .  Reference provided  by Derek Chirnside

Hero to Host, by Margaret Wheatley. Reference provided  by Derek Chirnside

"on-line leaders need to spend considerable thought and time constructing the ideal learning environment that will encourage, sustain and celebrate on-line dialogue." Susan Alcorn [[MacKay]]

Acknowledgment, validation, recognition

Dialogue process
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Stages of group development

Bruce Tuckman's (1965) 4-stage model of group development.  He labelled the stages as:

1. Forming: The group comes together and gets to initially know one other and form as a group.

2. Storming: A chaotic vying for leadership and trialling of group processes

3. Norming: Eventually agreement is reached on how the group operates (norming)

4. Performing: The group practices its craft and becomes effective in meeting its objectives.

Cindy Xin adds a fifty stage - transforming: The group reaches the point when it is able to achieve beyond the objectives it set for itself originally, to transcend, and to reinvent itself. It is the ultimate goal of growth for the group as a whole.

References [edit]

Feenberg, A. (1989). The written world. In R. Mason & A. Kaye (Eds.), Mindweave: Communication, computers, and distance education (pp. 22-39). Oxford: Pergamon Press. Also available at http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/feenberg/Writworl.htm style="font-weight: bold;">

Gadamer, H.-G. (1982). Truth and method. New York: Crossroad.

Xin. C. & Feenberg, A. (2006). Pedagogy in cyberspace: The dynamics of online discussion. Journal of Distance Education, 21(2), 1-25. Also availabe at http://www.cade-aced.ca/ style="font-weight: bold;">

Web resources [edit]

Larry Lashway, JoAnn Mazzarella, Thomas Grundy
School Leadership: Handbook for Excellence, Chapt 1. Portrait of a Leader http://eric.uoregon.edu/publications/text/sl/characteristics

Stages of group development http://www.businessballs.com/tuckmanformingstormingnormingperforming.htm 

Sherry Arnstein's (1962) Ladder of Citizen Participation that illustrates levels of participation and engagement in community development.  Ladder of Citizen participation (as described in wikipedia) (Provided by Barb Berry)

Derek Wenmoth defines four levels of motivation in people who blog. From lowest to the highest level, they are consumer, commentor, contributor, and commentator.
http://blog.core-ed.net/derek/2006/11/participation_online_the_four.html class="annotation a138 hover">)

Examples of using blogs for organized and facilitated discussions, such as SANTEC Blogs for quality learning in developing contexts and Terra Incognita. 

Quotes [edit]

David Bohm sets out three basic conditions for Dialogue:

Participants must suspend their assumptions. ‘What is essential here is the presence of the spirit of dialogue, which is in short, the ability to hold many points of view in suspension, along with a primary interest in the creation of common meaning’ (Bohm and Peat 1987: 247). Suspending an assumption does not mean ignoring it, but rather ‘holding it in front of us’ ready for exploration. (This links very closely with Gadamer’s view of pre-judgements).

Participants must view each other as colleagues or peers. Dialogue occurs when people appreciate that they are involved in a mutual quest for understanding and insight. ‘A Dialogue is essentially a conversation between equals’ (Bohm et. al. 1991).

In the early stages there needs to be a facilitator who ‘holds the context’ of dialogue. ‘Their role should be to occasionally point out situations that might seem to be presenting sticking points for the group, in other words, to aid the process of collective proprioception, but these interventions should never be manipulative nor obtrusive’ (Bohm et. al. 1991). They continue, ‘guidance, when it is felt to be necessary, should take the form of "leading from behind" and preserve the intention of making itself redundant as quickly as possible’.

Tools to Support Online Dialogue [edit]