I know we are all busy and I hope you can find time to read the chapter on addressing conflict. But even if you haven't, let's start off by talking about any prior experiences we might have had of online conflict from observation or involvement.
So, do you have a story about this you can share? How did the conflict come about? What was the context? Was it resolved and if so how? What did you learn/take away from the experience that you would bring to your own facilitation online?
Please click on the green "comments" word below to post your comment/reply.
Look forward to hearing your stories in reply to this post. :-)
Nick
p.s. just a reminder that there is a tutorial on How to post to the programme Blog on the Help page of the programme website.
8 comments:
I remeber I experienced almost most all of these conflicts, reading this chapter brings back the old memories,when I was not so clear about why I took a specifial action to deal with the conflicts, and I sometime not sure about how did it work for me. Now I found the theory back up my actions, that is really useful. One point I am not fully understand is about the first H of 3 H's, People in conflicts need to be held, heard, and healed, can any one tell me more about how to hold the people in conflicts?
i still am constrained by years of being both the content provider and a facilitator (of some type) of the discussion around the content. Conflicts can arise in this situation even with the facilitator who is too connected to owning his/her content. This arose again this week, even though I am trying really hard to avoid situations where I am asked to facilitate and to bring content.
I think people being 'held' means they feel the group 'holds them' in respect and love. In one group culture which I go to, it is appropriate to hug an individual to show this love and respect. In other groups I believe it can achieved by direct eye content - speaking through your 'eyes' that you are 'holding' them.
Thanks Xin Huang and Andrew for coming in. Xin Huang, like Andrew, I took 'held' to mean both respected and also 'safe/protected' to some extent.
I think one way of doing this is the agreements we made together at the beginning of this. Shared purpose and the agreements of norms of online communication with each other. I certainly think both of these can help to reduce online conflicts. What about you Xin, Andrew, And others as you read the comments?
For me some keys in reading and before responding is to ask for clarification but keeping it to "I" .. ie, stress what my interpretation is (so the responsibility for miscommunication could be mine) and to ask if my interpretation and any assumptions I make in that are correct. I used this idea from Nancy White's article at http://tinyurl.com/3772jj
Thanks Andrew for your explenation, I agree with that.
I still feel a little bit hard to apply these principles into online learning evironment when the participants are not there at the same time, email, blog, forum are the most popular methods we currently use for online learning, but they are all asynchronous, you might sesnce the smell of conflict, but since you can't really get hold of the people invovled on time, you might miss out the best opportunity to address the conflicts and get them sorted. When that moment passed, the conflict might sink down but will not disappear,just become much more harder to uncover. The techniques in the readings are more about face to face practice, any theory or principles specifically on online context?
There are some books mentioned on the workshop website at the bottom of the schedule page which are useful for this. I'd also add Gilly Salmon's e-Moderating to that list as well. Nancy White's website (also referenced in the course) I'd strongly recommend too. Nancy also runs an email listserv called online facilitation that is worth joining and the list is very responsive to calls for help in real time.
I've also noticed a trend the last few years where the asynch-synch balance seems to be shifting more towards the synchronous communication side again .. skype, WebEx, IM and async that is almost synchronous in it's immediacy e.g. twitter, rss feeds, etc.
I'm wondering if we are all getting so much info overload that we starting to respond to synch calls more than asynchronous work as a result. And how might this 'shortness of time/attention' impact on online conflict online? Could it increase the tendency for conflict if people feel more pressed time wise? What are your thoughts?
Xin Huang and Andrew thanks for participating in this. At least one person couldn't post, as the word verification was causing probs (I must admit that for me I usually have to try twice to get a comment submission).
It seems the key points coming out of our brief discussion was that some onground facilitation skills for reducing the liklihood of conflict and for dealing with it when it happens are adaptable to online. However, it takes some practice and reflection to get them to work. The references given in the readings session for week 6 are a good source for tips and strategies in this regard.
Dear Online Facilitators,
You can post to the blog without needing a login and password.
When making your comment, under the "Choose an identity" part, choose "Other" then put in your name in and click "Publish your comment".
Then you are all done.
Best regards,
Stephen
[Programme Leader]
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