In 2004 the Australian Flexible Learning Community began a public online group, "Getting Started in Flexible Learning" which was moderated by Judy Fawcett and targeted especially for practitioners who were new to flexible learning and wished to engage in a process of guided discovery. This article is drawn from the discussions that took place in the group between February and November. Many thanks to all who participated.

Have you thought about how dialogue in an online situation might differ to face to face? Are there different styles of dialogue? What is your style?

Effective online dialogue
Online courses are now an important new learning medium being carried out in traditional educational settings. They permit countless people to communicate globally, simultaneously, and inexpensively with one another. Educators find that they need a new repertoire of skills or a new way of using old skills to successfully communicate in this new medium. Maintaining dialogue throughout an online course is the essential ingredient and the demands on the instructor are even greater when learners are at a distance. Online dialogue is a  ‘conversation’ between two or more people exchanging ideas or opinions - the more effective the dialogue, the more effective the learning.

What are the elements of online dialogue?
I think that it is very important for the facilitator to move away from the centre stage of a classroom to a more collaborative online learning environment. The role of the instructor will shift from expert to that of guide for the direction of inquiry and promoter of innovative thinking patterns. Facilitators have to learn to communicate using different styles, voices and questions that enhance the online group’s learning process. Active learning tools that promote more active learning include email, listservs, forums, chat rooms, online videoconferencing, and simulated environments.

The immediate purpose of good dialogue is to learn from another person and not to necessarily reach a decision, but to gain insights about an issue and the group’s thoughts around it; that is, staying open to having an opinion or belief changed by something another participant shares.

Why do we need to speak? By investigating the reasons why we say what we do, we unearth the core feelings, assumptions and meanings an issue might have for us. An easy way to begin checking your intentions is to ask yourself, "why am I saying this, and what motivates me to share this with the group?"

We need to explore our assumptions and check others’. People generally take assumptions as fact and express them as such, so it’s hard not to be biased about our own opinions (which we see as 'truths' rather than opinions). And, because it’s almost second nature, people on the receiving end of the communication can take the comments as fact, too. Assumptions can be dangerous and can lead people toward incorrect solutions or negative feelings for another person.

What techniques can you use to make online dialogue more effective?

Create healthy online communities –
This is where the facilitator shares responsibility and collaboration with the participants and creates a culture of stepping back to remove leader dependency allowing participants to speak their minds and look out for each other. The facilitator makes sure all participate in meaningful learning activities linked to a clear, manageable feedback loop for discussion and evaluation. It is important to get everyone talking without anyone dominating. Finally, the facilitator tracks the progress of the course to draw out patterns, cover the desired ground thoroughly, and move toward a conclusion that is acceptable to all.

Craft interventions –
An "intervention" is carefully crafted dialogue that is introduced to achieve a change in the group's awareness and/or direction to guide participants toward actions that benefit the group. There are many examples, including uncovering information or insight, generating new options and clarifying the basis for action.

Use voice and tone
These are strategic online communication skills; a different voice can be used to introduce alternate perspectives into the dialogue. This technique may be used to:

• Introduce multiple perspectives on key issues
  
• Highlight or introduce, ideas that were omitted or may need reinforcing
  
• Indicate levels of importance or concepts through narrative means
  
• Weave and integrate into the main discussion some ideas that may seem irrelevant but, when observed through another perspective, indicate valid
  and focused lines of thought.

Dig deeper by reading between the lines
As the group evolves we can see patterns among the conversations. We need strategies to sharpen focus or deepen dialogue.

References:

Baker, Judy, Ph.D., 1999, Pedagogical Innovation via Instructional Technology,
Poster Presentation, [online], Syllabus99 Conference, Available: http://www.sdccdonline.net/docs/PedagogicalInnovationInstructionalTechnologyarticle.doc Accessed: 1/6/03

Haavind, Sarah, 1999, ‘Effective Techniques for Keeping Web Discussions Running Smoothly’[online], The Concord Consortium, Available: http://www.concord.org/newsletter/1999winter/speakingvoices.html, Accessed: 1/6/03

Ivy Sea Online, 2003, ‘What is Dialogue?’ [online], Ivy Sea Inc, Available: http://www.ivysea.com/pages/ca1198_1.html, Accessed: 1/6/03

OnLine Learning International, 2003, ‘Interactive Skills in a Networked Environment’ [online], OnLine Learning International, Available: http://www.olliolli.com/workshops/fc203/, Accessed: 1/6/03

Online Dialogue in the public arena - One personal story (Judy Fawcett)

I can remember that my first experiences were hardly stimulating and I am not a great user now so perhaps that is why. Here is my story from a couple of years ago ……..

Off I went into an unknown world … to Yahoo Chat. Well firstly I couldn’t believe the problems I had in just setting up a password. I know it’s a big “room’ with lots of ‘chatters’ but I had no idea of the size or scope. It took me 4 times to select a password that no-one else had thought of!!!! I decided I would surf the rooms (as you do!) to get a feel for the chat environment. But so was everyone else!!! Conversations were squeezed between people entering and leaving the room at 5 sec intervals. I tried Movies, Romance and Families Rooms. There were approx 20 – 50 people in at a time. The language was amazing……  not rough just unintelligible for Judy who isn’t a lover and doesn’t have the language acquisition of emoticons :( That’s all they were using. I could only understand 1 out of every 20 lines!! Down the right hand side was a pane of automatic emoticons that I thought I could select to contribute and more importantly keep up to speed, except I found when selecting them they had very unusual and suggestive vocab translations – not quite what I intended to say! At least in the Family Room I could follow the conversation, understand it and even converse. People had actually acknowledged that I was in the room. You see these chatters were prepared to hang around at least long enough to start some dialogue.

Due to my lukewarm response I had been told to try the Palace and so with somewhat less excitement I changed Public Chat Rooms. WOW! Another Whole New World here. I did the right thing and devoured the Palace Users Guide and Palace Basics Information first. I had been clearly out of my league in Yahoo Chat so wanted to appear more experienced here. I was having problems with the connection and was told to be patient and to keep trying later. It was here that I was introduced to Avatars, incognito pictorial representations of myself – the butterfly was my personal favourite.

I tried ICQ Chat Rooms. There were 100’s of them! But alas little activity within – you know: ‘the lights were on but nobody was home’. At least connection was quick and easy through a guest login. I tried similar rooms to Yahoo going into Movies, Romance, Travel and Computers to compare. I waited, even chatted to myself, but no one was interested. By this stage after three nights of research, enthusiasm had waned significantly.

Onto Talk City – there were approx. 212 people chatting in 62 different rooms. It wasn’t surprising to notice that the Sexy/Romance Rooms had the most people chatting. The conversations suggested that many met here on a regular basis. For the first time I really felt like I was intruding into a private world. I didn’t feel comfortable to lurk.

To finish, I decided to throw caution to the wind and entered Nerd World Media’s Chat Machine – with a name like that …………... In every room I entered there was some chatter going on until they noticed that I and other ‘strangers’ had arrived and then it strangely went quiet – chat ceased. Many entered these rooms while I was there but few (I guess like me) actually spoke. But they didn’t leave either; they just lurked in the background.

So that was my first journey.

Online Chat as a Teaching Tool  (by Jacquie Houlden)

You might be interested in finding about the new chat feature which is an avatar based option (you can switch between text and avatars whilst in a chat). It's a new feature in the Janison chat room with all the other features such as moderation, whispering etc but with a comic chat interface. We developed it after discussions with Education Queensland and think it's going to appeal to a wide cross-section of online users.

We wanted to give teachers more options for creative online teaching. One idea behind this was to facilitate the use of the chat room as a role play room. For example, if you had a group of students studying a novel they could firstly create (ie design and then upload) their own avatars based on the novel's characters, then act out a play which is related to the novel using the characters they have developed.

We think it's only limited by the imagination of the teachers who are using it, and would love to hear any other suggestions as to its use. You can find out more about the chat features and some suggestions for ways it could be used, at the Education Queensland Learning place site or come and have a try yourself on the Janison site in our community section, www.janison.com.au.

Other examples of avatar chat:

"The Palace":
http://www.thepalace.com

“DreamChat” :
http://www.dreamchat.com

“Habbo Hotel”:
http://www.habbohotel.co.uk/habbo/en/

Text Chat versus Voice Chat - Chris Ainsworth talks about his experiences:

For Moodle - the text chat is like most others with a nice little touch that if you have uploaded a profile picture into the system that is displayed each time your submitted text is displayed - it gives you a feeling of connectedness with the individual making the comment. I believe this is extremely important if people have never met F2F before. Moodle chat is easy to use and although it lacks a couple of nice features, is a great and useful tool within Moodle.

The second chat room we used was a Voice chat provided to us by Compued for the Community Project Support Team which has proven to be a major hit and has brought great life for those participating. If you have a sound card and no mic, you can still participate via the text box and listen to the conversations.

Advantages and disadvantages and some experiences in terms of rules and etiquette

Text Chat

• everyone can participate
• maximum of 3 agenda items can be covered in 1 hour
• maximum of 20 people to a room if interaction is to happen between participants (10 is the ideal number I believe)

Voice Chat

• maximum of 5 agenda items per hour
• maximum of 20 people in the session for interaction – however can be larger numbers if only a few are scheduled to give a presentation – a couple of us from the project team will be up at 3 am Thursday morning to learn how to handle a chat room with over 300 participants in a presentation.

Both styles of chat

• an agenda needs to be strictly adhered to
• people need to ensure they are logged into the chat before it is due to start and socialise before the due start time. Experience has shown that people entering a room after a session really sidetracks the flow with people jumping and welcoming them and carrying on their own agendas – think about your F2F classes – would you allow it to happen? Same principles apply in a chat room as in a classroom.
• an experienced moderator / facilitator is a must – if you are inexperienced – then find a mentor to assist you in your presentation.
• allowance after the scheduled meeting – again to socialise
  The best advice I believe I can pass on as an educator is that you use commonsense when you enter a chat room and act as if you were inside a F2F class room if you are a participant. If you are a facilitator – open your rooms 15 min beforehand or even 30 min if you have the time and book your room (if you need to book one) for 30 min after the scheduled meeting completion time to allow for socialisation. People attending a one hour chat should allow about 2 hours for the activity – at least 15 min before to login get settled and all the welcome socialisation and 30 min afterwards for that important networking that happens. The last 15 min is to tidy up – get your thoughts back together, grab a cuppa and settle back into your job routine. Anything less than that then you are not giving the chat session the undivided attention that your job demands and the chat session needs. Both will be half hearted for about a two-hour period around the scheduled chat session.