Project Summary

(This is a new project, starting in Fall 2010. This material describes our motivations and plans from the project proposal document.)

Social deliberative skills

A key human capacity is the ability to negotiate situations involving differing opinions where a resolution of ideas is sought, e.g., in dispute resolution, collaborative problem solving, bargaining, and civic deliberation processes. The need for this deliberative capacity is seen in all realms of human activity from international politics, to collaborative work, to mundane familial squabbles.1 Conflict and difference too often result in unsatisfactory outcomes that can be attributed to insufficient skill, or an inability to bring existing skills to bear in difficult situations. Throughout the various contexts mentioned above many of the same underlying skills and capacities are called for (see skills list in Table below).

Desirable end states include mutually acceptable plans of action, creative win-win solutions, the resolution or mediation of differences, or simply greater clarity, mutual understanding and trust. If one simply observes one's acquaintances or reads the newspapers, it is glaringly apparent that such "social deliberative skills" are not sufficiently developed or used in a wide array of situations, people, and groups.   Because many lack these capacities, skilled mediation, facilitation, coaching or diplomacy is often critical to successful outcomes.  Still, robust success in all of above mentioned contexts is greatly improved to the extent that the involved participants have and use such capacities.   We propose to investigate how skills such as critical thinking, mutual understanding and self reflection can be supported and enhanced by a set of online tools and approaches.

In the deliberative contexts that we deal with, we do not have the time (with users) to teach new skills from scratch. Rather, we focus on supporting more robust (wide ranging and precise) use of existing deliberative and self-reflective skills that we assume most individuals have learned at least in limited contexts. Our approach includes a realistic and research-based appreciation of the limitations of human rationality, including acknowledging the natural role of human emotions, to lead to better support for social deliberative skills.2

Online Contexts

Many communication and collaboration interactions now take place on the Internet, which is becoming a ubiquitous global social communication medium. This research investigates how to support the use of social deliberative skills within online communication. Our focus is on supporting mutual understanding and high quality satisfactory outcomes between individuals and/or groups who are communicating with online tools. This approach to skill and capacity building is not through traditional instructional methods, but by providing scaffolded support in the context of real tasks done with familiar tools. Online work and communication provides unique opportunities because the communication medium itself (not only the content but the prompts, constraints, and choices that the interface affords the user) can be structured to directly guide and support skill building and sustained skill use.

For example, this approach would address the question "how can the capacity to hold multiple perspectives be supported by slight modifications in the design of traditional online discussion forums?" Thus, skills and capacities can be improved and more fully brought to bear while someone is going about the daily tasks of work, communication, problem solving, etc. (there being different online tools best suited to different tasks). We acknowledge that in many cases something is lost (e.g. information from vocal intonation) when moving from face to face to online communication, and we may include initial face to face meetings, phone calls, or video-conferencing among participants as is appropriate and practical.

This team will conduct research and implement software tools to support participants and facilitators (each with a different set of tools) engaged in online deliberative discourse ("deliberation" goes beyond collaborative "dialog" to imply critical thinking, decision making, and meaning-generation). The software will prompt, remind, and coach participants and facilitators to draw their attention to important features of the deliberative situation. We will be conducting research in several domains using several sets of online tools, thus we are investigating a generic approach or method (a range of online support features) rather than a specific piece of software.

Research Focus

This research investigates how computational tools can support online social deliberative skills. We aim to support these skills to improve online deliberative outcomes, and also because such generic skill improvement is likely to transfer from online to offline experiences.

This team will conduct research and implement software tools to support participants and facilitators (each with a different set of tools) engaged in online deliberative discourse (“deliberation” goes beyond collaborative “dialogue” to imply critical thinking, decision making, and meaning-generation). This software will prompt, remind, and coach participants and facilitators to draw their attentionto important features of the deliberative situation. In the deliberative contexts that we deal with, we do not have the time (with users) to teach new skills from scratch. Rather, we focus on supporting more robust (wide ranging and precise) use of existing deliberative and self-reflective skills that we assume most individuals have learned at least in limited contexts. Our approach includes a realistic and research-based appreciation of the limitations of human rationality, including acknowledging the natural role of human emotions, to lead to better support for social deliberative skills.3

Research Hypotheses

This research project will test the hypothesis that online participants and facilitators produce more positive results when supported by (1) scaffolding that draws attention to important skills and features of social deliberative processes; and (2) adaptive coaching that provides explicit hints and expert advice.

Scaffolding includes covert structural components of the visual interface or the activity procedure, while adaptive coaching involves explicit verbal suggestionsusing computational models and opportunistic interventions. Results are defined more completely elsewhere, but briefly put they involve people reporting more satisfactory outcomes for the deliberation and gaining both Basic and Reflective deliberation skills. An additional hypothesis is that tools that support Basic and Reflective social deliberative skills will have more positive outcomes than do tools that support only Basic skills.

Table of Social Deliberative Skills

 
Basic Social Deliberative Skills Reflective Social Deliberative Skills
  • Ability to separate facts/observations from opinions/inferences;
  • Ability to form logical arguments explaining/justifying opinions or hypotheses, including citing sources; supporting inferences;
  • Ability to separate one's "position" or "held strategy" from one's underlying needs and interests;
  • Ability to open to and think creatively about alternative solutions and mutual gain;
  • Ability to frame requests, agreements, and outcomes in concrete measurable terms;
  • Ability to reframe differences and "no's" (objections or refusals) in positive terms.
  • Ability to identify bias, assumptions, and underlying motivations in self and inquire about them in others; 4
  • Ability to listen to another's narrative history and perspective, and put oneself in their shoes ("cognitive empathy");
  • Ability to reflect on and validate one's emotional state and reactions; and accept the validity of other's emotional realities;
  • Ability to reflect upon the dialog and deliberation process itself—E.g. Is it working? Should the goals or method be modified?
  • Ability to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity in information and knowledge.

This Social Computing project will support a large set of user skills, attitudes and behaviors. Social deliberative skills involve the application of reasoning skills (e.g., critical thinking, rational dialogue, self reflection, and cognitive empathy) to situations where there are conflicting beliefs or needs. We will consider not only the target skills (see Table), but also the cognitive and affective reasons why these skills are not easily brought to bear. No other research project on online deliberation, collaboration, or problems solving that we are aware of includes these factors.  Our approach is novel in its focus on understanding, adapting to, and supporting the Social deliberative skills listed in the Table, and in its use of computational models to help achieve these goals.

Application domains/contexts

We will be applying similar design and evaluation methods in three domains that involve people trying to understand each others' perspectives in on-line deliberation:

  1. Online dispute resolution (ODR) in dispute contexts including e-commerce (e.g. EBay and PayPal), workplace disputes (e.g. National Mediation Board);
  2. Student argumentation and deliberation of hypotheses in a collaborative inquiry learning environment (in the domain of forensic investigation for learning biology);
  3. Online deliberation in civic and values-based issues (e.g. public policy deliberation; religious tolerance dialog).

Though these contexts are quite different, there are significant underlying similarities in the deliberative capacities needed (see Table 1), and their diversity will help us generate very robust outcomes likely to be applicable across many domains. Including multiple test domains may seem daunting, but in all of these domains we will be adding relatively simple features or procedural changes to existing software systems.  In all cases the interventions will involve bringing attention to (visually or verbally reminding, prompting, suggesting, etc.) certain aspects of the situation that correspond to what a higher order social deliberative skill would be paying attention to. 

 

Notes

  • This web page is maintained by co-Princical Investigator Tom Murray and it contains his perspective on this and related projects. The PI on this NSF grant is Beverly Woolf, and the official UMass home page for the project will be found here.
    NSF project number and disclaimer will go -here-. [↩]
  1. Spragens 1990; Kögler 1992; Toulmin 1958; Stragens, 1990. [↩]
  2. Goleman, 1985, 1995; Bok 1983; Habermas 1999; Matthews et al., 2002. [↩]
  3. A particular contribution of this research is to draw on the literature in human communication, cognitive biases (“bounded rationality”) (Kahneman, Slovic & Tversky 1982) and adult cognitive development (Basseches 2005; Elster 1999; Fisher 2002; Cooke-Grueter 2006; King & Kitchener 1994). [↩]
  4. Includes an ability to compensate for power differentials and identify one's bottom line "best alternative to negotiated agreement." [↩]