5 Best Practices to Facilitate Dialogue in Online Learning Spaces

Although the words ‘discussion’ and ‘dialogue’ are often used interchangeably, their meanings are different. A discussion is a conversation primarily used to share information or ideas. In contrast, dialogue is a conversation where participants are encouraged to explore a diversity of perspectives, appreciate differences, and build mutual understanding. During dialogue conversations, instructors drop their ‘expert’ role in the classroom, and instead facilitate a space where all students can learn and teach each other.

Dialogue facilitators typically ask questions that encourage students to share their perspectives and experiences on a topic. Although dialogue is a conversation strategy used most often in conflict resolution and the social sciences, it can be used in all disciplines that wish to explore different perspectives and worldviews. If you wish to better manage conversational dialogue in your classroom, try applying these five best practices: 

• Setting Community Guidelines. Dialogue is a conversation strategy where students share personal perspectives and experiences. Therefore, it's important to nurture a brave space. Establishing community guidelines is an excellent way to help students navigate dialogue in the classroom. Read 5 Discussion Rules for Turbulent Times for ideas on what community guidelines to establish for your classroom dialogue.
• Asking open ended questions. Crafting great questions for dialogue is no easy task. However, asking open-ended questions that begin with how, what, or why are a great start to achieving the most interesting and thoughtful answers from your students. For example, you could ask questions such as: How did you develop your perspective on this topic? How is this topic relevant to you and your career? What is your experience with this topic? Why is this issue important to you?
• Prepare questions in advance. Dialogue conversations tend to take many unexpected paths so challenge yourself to draft ten questions before a dialogue session in order to enrich the conversation with thoughtful questions that lead to deeper understanding. 
• Make observations and encourage the sharing of different perspectives and experiences. One of the best strategies to facilitate dialogue is to make observations with follow up questions in order to bring different perspectives to the conversation. As an example you could comment, “I noticed a majority of you stated X. Does anyone else have a different perspective?” or “Has anyone experienced something different from what was mentioned?”
• Have students reflect on their dialogue experience. Since dialogue helps students acknowledge different points of view, it is helpful to have students reflect on their conversation. Possible follow up reflection questions could include asking students if their mind or thoughts on the topic have changed after the dialogue conversation. For example, you could ask “What is something you learned today from our conversation” or “In what way has our conversation today changed your thinking about X topic?”

This is the fourth article of a four-part series that focuses on strategies for better conversations in online classrooms. In this series, best practices were explored and recommendations given to help online instructors enhance their classroom conversations using debate, discussions, and dialogue. Click here to visit the first article providing an overview of the series.