Sparkling Conversation

Photographer Zeke Berman created this image with silhouettes of real people.

“Each morning we must hold out the chalice of our being to receive, to carry, and to give back.” – Dag Hammarskjold

We yearn for conversation that will challenge and inspire us, exchanges in which our own voice will also be heard. Bohm contrasts ordinary discussion, in which participants try to convince each other of their own fixed views, with dialogue, in which there is real interaction, and participation in “a pool of common meaning which is capable of constant development and change” (Bohm, 1987, cited in Smith, 2001, p. 7). Such radiant, Sparkling Conversations are the sacred heart of THE DREAMED-OF COMMUNITY. FRIENDSHIP and VISUAL LEARNING encourage Sparkling Conversations. Rich dialogue creates openings for collaborations and INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES. TEACHERS facilitate Sparkling Conversations with attention to the SPIRAL pattern, building a “fire at the centre” (Wenger, McDermott and Snyder, 2002) in an open space to which people are drawn by warmth and light.

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Internet technology makes communication instant and easy. Yet conversation in online learning environments is one of the greatest challenges – and often the greatest failures – of instructional design. Typical online discussions tend to be fractured, contrived, time-consuming and unproductive.

Failures of conversation are not unique to the online learning environment, and can even be said to typify conversation in our times. The Canadian Institute for Cultural Affairs, in its study of conversation (Stanfield, ed., 2000) comments that the art of serious conversation is disappearing. Even among friends and colleagues, conversations are often superficial and hurried; ideas remain undeveloped, and judgements precede reflection. Lives in which information and television fill all the gaps leave no time for critical thinking and listening with deep respect.

Online communities seem to offer a new space in which Sparkling Conversation may become possible. People often do take time to reflect on issues and construct their postings before committing their ideas to a discussion. Contributing to an online conversation can happen in whatever time and space our lives allow. The Web is a place where we can all find kindred spirits. And as Peters (2004) notes, our online identities can be more playful, fearless and performative than our everyday selves. Yet there are still many barriers to hosting Sparkling Conversations on the Internet.

The Barrier of Time: The demands on people’s time may be the single greatest barrier facing designers of online courses and communities. Asynchronous online discussions take a great deal more time and effort than face-to-face meetings, and often have considerably less value and excitement. Participants must navigate the technology, read previous posts, orient themselves to the conversation in the absence of visual cues, and then compose, edit and post their own messages.

The Barrier of “Aliveness”:  Painstakingly composed contributions are often dropped into a well of silence, and rather than engaging in conversation, contributors feel they are talking only with themselves. Weil and Rosen (1997) describe the difficulties that inhere in learning to talk without the “complex pragmatics” that inform everyday conversations in face-to-face settings. Timing, style, body language, and intonation allow us to appraise dialogue and reflect on group dynamics as we speak (p. 77). In an electronic conversation, we are trying to communicate in the absence of rules and cues (p. 78). We often have no idea whether our contributions to a discussion are wanted, appreciated or ignored.

The Barrier of Relevance:  What is the point of an online conversation? Does it have enough discernable value that we want to dedicate the requisite time and energy to the task?

The Barrier of Anxiety: The other participants in an online discussion are unknown. How will the knowledge we share or generate be used, abused or exploited (Contu and Wilmott, 2003)?

To help address the barrier of time, convenors can set clear objectives and allocate a specific timeframe for each discussion. Active listening skills and private messages to participants can be used to weave comments and people together, acknowledging the value of each participant, and “teasing” contributions from those who feel too busy, too fearful, or too confused. Strategic summaries help to establish the significance of the dialogue to date and allow new people to see what is happening quickly (Scheuermeier, 2002). Conversations may become more enjoyable and less burdensome when they are time-limited events punctuated by silence. They may become more exciting when linked to offline events, such as preparing for and debriefing from a conference (White, 2002). When designing discussions in online courses, the time spent in conversation becomes more meaningful when it can be leveraged to assignments. Contributors need to feel that their ideas and arguments can be repurposed when working on other projects.

Sandra and Spayde (2001) describe the key to communities of passionate conversation with reference to the salons of the Harlem Renaissance. They write, “The importance of the problems to be discussed, the volatile and vital mood of the place, the sense participants had of being part of a significant group at a time of meaningful change – these elements were the fertile soil of the Harlem scene, as they have been for all great salons” (p. 27).  Their comments address the barrier of relevance. Sparkling Conversation is focussed on important issues and complex problems. It includes significant contributions from notable thinkers. It is characterized by a quality of “aliveness” (Wenger, McDermott and Snyder, 2002).

Of vital importance to the pace, vitality and value of a conversation is gathering the “critical mass” of people needed to sustain lively dialogue (Bates and Poole, 2003; White, 2002).  How do we make an online space so inviting and valuable that many people will make enough time in their hectic lives to enter it? Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002) offer some tips including building on common ground, and building interpersonal relationships – so that people feel connected to and responsible for other participants in a community of practice.  Wenger et. al. also counsel designers to reach for the sky, imagining the best and biggest possibilities for the community. Finding this balance between roots (in commonality and belonging) and shoots (in dreams, vision and purpose) is critical to creating a space of “aliveness.”

What practical steps can we take to address people’s anxiety with the technology, and with the process of disclosure and disagreement online? White (2002) and Scheuemeir (2002) point to the importance of the facilitator who can encourage “elders” to mentor new members and distinguish between argument - “the great forcing-house of originality” (Sandra and Spayde, 2001) – and serious conflict that may require mediation. Effective design makes technology simple and easy to access. Orientation information and activities can welcome newcomers, as can private email from the teacher or facilitator.

Sandra and Spayde (2001) suggest that the best metaphor for passionate conversation is a dance (p. 163). Stimulating online conversation may be compared with a circle dance: led by a caller, in an atmosphere of playfulness, partners open into foursomes, join the large circle, and separate into small groups in a rhythmic pattern that combines familiarity, challenge and excitement.

Sparkling Conversations are fast-paced, useful and relevant. Effective design creates multiple access points. Provide space for diverse levels of engagement, from listening at the edges to tending the fire at the center. Emphasize the value of the discussion by holding its purpose at the core. Punctuate vital dialogue with periods of silence.

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Conversation is neither a natural skill, nor one that is supported in our cultural environment. To this end, conversation tips and guidelines need to be included  in the GOOD TOOLS supplied to students. TEACHERS need to receive training and resources to support their facilitation of seminars. Specific, open questions are an essential component of sparkling conversations. In addition to responding to the teacher’s “CATALYTIC QUESTIONS,” participants can be asked to frame catalytic questions of their own, and to end each posted assignment with one or two questions that emerge from their inquiries. Annotated live links and shared images can be used to create a livelier and more stimulating environment.

The Dreamed-of Community

 Spider web, copied from  http://www.fssbirding.org.uk/textures&patternsphotopageperu.htm

Starhawk (1982, 1997) writes: “We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been – a place, half-remembered, and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.”  This Dreamed-of-Community may never exist; perhaps it should not. Still the dream can help designers of online learning environments to create spaces for FRIENDSHIP and SPARKLING CONVERSATIONS where participants are challenged and empowered by INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES.

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Internet technology supports globalization, which destroys the economic and social infrastructure of place-based communities. But the Web also allows the formation of new kinds of communities in ways that can be powerful and important.

Coming Home: Wresch (1996) describes one of the central dilemmas of the “Information Age.” As information multiplies into an overwhelming noise, we also experience an equally overwhelming lacuna: the relentless erasure of “common knowledge” in place-based cultures and economies. This contested commons is the place called home. Plant medicines; place names; images of our home regions, values and origins; comprehension of natural cycles and systems: this intimate, intricate knowledge is part of every human culture rooted in place. The Web allows us to form communities of inquiry that are diverse and wide-ranging, and yet leave every participant situated in a beloved home place (Haughey, 1995). How can this capacity for situatedness be employed in the design of courses and communities?

Purposeful Community: White (2002): reminds us that community is not the goal, but rather, it is the means of helping people achieve their goal. Bruno Bettelheim (1974, cited in Vanier, 1979, p. 5) writes, “I am convinced communal life can flourish only if it exists for an aim outside itself. Community is viable only if it is the outgrowth of a deep involvement in a purpose which is other than, or above, that of being a community.”

Vanier (1979) comments, “The two greatest dangers of community are ‘friends’ and ‘enemies’…. Human friendships can very quickly become a club of mediocrities, enclosed in mutual flattery and approval” (p. 7), while discord and enmity shatter innumerable communities. The Web offers multiple tools and manifold materials for design and construction. How can an online community be built so that its overarching purpose incites a willingness to forgo, to act and to learn, allowing us to address these inevitable threats?

Communities of Practice: “Communities of practice” theory suggests a basic framework for understanding and building dynamic learning communities. Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002) describe the three fundamental elements of a community of practice as “a domain of knowledge, which defines a set of issues; a community of people who care about this domain; and the shared practice they are developing to be effective in this domain” (p. 27). Developing a living, dynamic community involves mapping the domain that inspires and gives purpose to dialogue. This “common ground” of community needs to concern complex, longstanding problems common to all members. A domain with both strategic social relevance and personal meaning to participants can draw on a potent source of energy. In some important sense, the Web is spun from this intersection. The Web has the capacity to connect people across time and space, as communities of practice connect people across disciplines. Such connections create synergies and support innovation. Web environments that support dynamic, living communities of practice will be visually stimulating, honour conscious and unconscious processes, invite participation and shared leadership, and function to illuminate our lives.

Wenger and colleagues suggestions for good community design include nurturing private relationships between members, along with public events, and seeing the connection between them. Relationships forged through intimate interactions enliven and empower group process. The community coordinator, guardian or teacher must be careful to engage in private conversation and nurture informal links between members, as well as planning community events, building the knowledge base, and evaluating the value of the community for its members (among other duties). How can the architecture of an online learning community make space for gradations of intimacy?

Learning at the Borders:  The multiple, competing communities to which we all belong – ranging from family through class, race, nation and professional identity – have centripetal and centrifugal forces within borders that separate outside from inside. Heaney (1995) writes, “Centripetal participation moves us inward toward more intensive participation so that our learning and work influences and becomes constitutive elements in the definition of the community. Such participation (learning) is empowering. On the other hand, centrifugal participation moves us outward … and is this disempowering.” Yet Heaney recognizes (with Giroux) that the borders of communities of practice are characterized by “dynamic, chaotic energy” and the “frenzy of transformative learning.” A pedagogy of engagement is ideally situated along these borders, at “contested sites subject to the competing claims of intersecting communities.”

Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002) comment, “Good community architecture invites many different levels of participation” and caution that “peripheral activities are an essential dimension of communities of practice” (p. 56). They estimate that up to 70% of a community will not actively contribute, to which can be added a larger arena of those who have practice or interest just outside the community. Open and fluid borders that allow people to move in and out of different levels of engagement are part of designing a community for aliveness. How can projects, activities and outcomes in an online learning community cross borders, transgress established territories, and incorporate the spiralling energy of people’s inevitable movement into and away from the centre?

Problematizing Community: Do we know community best by its opposite: silence, isolation, the incapacity for intimacy and connection? What form of dialogue can scrutinize and embrace the silences inside our social life? “Community” is a warm, persuasive term, but what is it really? An advertising slogan, a paradox, a yearning, a sense of danger? Contu and Willmot (2003), in their critique of the “communities of practice” theory, note that as this theory has been appropriated by businesses, “Community is conceptualized in a way that tends to assume, or imply, coherence and consensus in its practices. Such usage … glosses a fractured, dynamic process of formation and reproduction in which there are often schisms and precarious alignments that are held together and papered over unreflexive invocations of hegemonic notions including ‘community,’ ‘family,’ ‘team,’ and ‘partnership.’” (p. 12).  They admonish us to view the context of learning as a contested history, not a neutral background, and to address the continuity of knowledge and power. How can we pose the question of community so that its social space emerges with contradictions intact, and wounds all visible?

The Web offers designers new tools for allowing and utilizing situatedness. It invites us to structure communities whose purpose is clarified by beautiful graphic design, opened by infinite layers of hypertext, and argued in asynchronous discussion where each person can speak without being interrupted. Multiple online approaches – including email, private forums, public forums, collaborative work space, online events, and offline catalysts can be used to incorporate gradations of intimacy. New developments in social computing suggest a Web of relatedness in a culture of infinite complexity.

Allow the Dreamed-of Community to inform and empower online spaces. Use the capacities of the Web to create an architecture that is inviting, open, editable and contestable. When design is an ongoing process that generates more questions than answers, designing itself becomes a catalyst for community development and a focus of situated inquiry.[1]

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Great communities are co-created with GOOD TOOLS by participants who QUESTION AUTHORITY. They incorporate a SPIRAL approach that can balance circling, centering and opening.