I think my biggest challenge has actually been managing the relationship between IF process and course content.  My students had two facilitation assignments: the first was leading a group discussion about a chapter from the environmental communication textbook.  In that case, really all they were doing (in IF language) would be exploring the issues related to course content.  The lessons for them as facilitators were about asking exploratory questions, capturing group input in some way, and learning to think about process.  I think these were a huge success in terms of student learning and skill development, but they were just one small piece of the IF process.

The second facilitation has been much more involved, and is also where I think the link to course content has been a struggle.  In this project they are going through the IF process, taking turns facilitating, and creating a discussion guide about a local environmental issue that could be used in a citizen discussion.  Our readings, have been about public dialogue, citizen discussion, and deliberative democracy.  Although I see clear links between the conceptual and empirical work we are reading and the process they are going through, the “content” of the course at this point has been very much about facilitation process and how facilitation is linked to public engagement and democracy– not environmental communication.  As communication students (not political theorists), my students really pick up on the process aspects of the readings.  So, from their perspective, the content and process are one and the same.  In that sense, they start to feel like the readings and ideas are redundant and not linked to the content of their actual projects.

In retrospect, I would design this course differently to embed the environmental communication content throughout (instead of as one distinct unit of the course) and do more of the public engagement process early, I think.  In some ways I think it’s much easier or more straightforward to separate content from process (by using IF process to talk about some other issue) than it is to have process and content tangled up together.  I know other communication folks (Tim, Allen, Windy, Pixie, etc.)  have participated in the IF summer institute and done some of this stuff in their courses and I wonder how that has worked out. I’m also curious to hear about other folks’ management of content/process with IF courses.

Of course, I’m always my own worst critic and it’s not clear to me yet what the students think.  Next week they are doing final presentations about their issue and their group process, and also turning in their major paper in which they reflect on their experience facilitating and being part of the IF process.  I’ll have a much better sense about their perspective after that.

I’m also at a point now where I’m re-thinking the design of the course on organizational communication that I’m teaching next quarter (April-June) and plan to use more of an IF approach.  I’ve learned a lot reading the blog entries here, I’m very glad to have this forum for continued conversation.

But only one group was able to come up with a research agenda and project that they could implement after four meetings.  I have to say I have been really surprised at how the students are taking this on.  They now meet outside of scheduled time.  Last week, I was getting sick and trying to get them to wrap up their sessions so I could crawl home and go to sleep, they simply took their evaluation forms and sent me home, they didn’t want to be rushed in their IF meetings.  “I hope you feel better soon Professor McBride, don’t worry about us, we’ll take it from here.”

I guess this is where the course content and its connection to the IF process has started to seem more crucial, as the IF process is allowing them to build course content themselves.  But I don’t think this would necessarily be the case.  This course is unusual in that it also has a lecture series attached to it, so my students spend some weeks doing IF, other weeks having speakers, local folks who come and talk about different issues facing San Francisco.  Amazingly, the university also provides a budget for me to take speakers out for dinner with a few students every visit, so I have asked them which speakers they want to meet with, and I am starting to see how the students are strategic, using the outside speakers as a resource for them in their projects.

The way the schedule worked out, we had five weeks of Intensive IF process at the start of the semester, and the idea was that the students would be able to generate a collaborative research project from these sessions.  Then we have five weeks of speakers during which time they will conduct the research they designed, followed by five more weeks of IF at the end of the semester where they take their research and turn it into a product that will be exhibited in the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Center.   But using the IF process to generate collaborative research, not just discussion, has been an interesting twist and I think has meant that the students are more actively generating course content than they would otherwise.  They have discussions, and then identify when they need more information, divide research tasks, then meet again the following week and report back on what they have found.  But I now spend significant amounts of time every day posting resources that they have found on our class blackboard site.

Another really interesting thing happened in terms of course ocntent at the end of last week.  We had a heated discussion about proposed sit/lie legislation in the city designed to give police another tool to curb some really outrageous behavior by street gypsies in Haight Ashbury, a few blocks from campus.  It was a highly charged conversation, people positioned themselves with the anarchists (there is a very strong anarchist group in the student body at USF…)  socialists, property owners, police, all the sudden you saw the true spectrum of opinions in the class.  I have assigned them thought essays that they hand on every other week, and reading them over the weekend, I saw judgment of others opinions in an entirely snarky way, ideological rants….I was so upset. But then I picked up one more essay, and it was someone who was questioning the IF process and if the group might be abusing it.  It was incredibly critical but thoughtful and I realized it could all be a teaching opportunity. These essays have turned into a more substantive self evaluation than the little forms I designed.  I never intended it that way….

So I went to class yesterday and said we were hitting the wall in our IF process, in our thinking about the course issues and that we needed to understand that democracy and citizenship and public space are the constellation of issues in the course.  Democracy isn’t easy, and citizenship means understanding the limits of our perspectives and respect for others.  I did not mention names but called people to task for being closed minded, faces around the table blushed.  It turned into a great conversation about how the unwritten MUSTS people bring with them to the table need to be transcended, the unwritten rules of the city that say some people are more important than others need to be challenged, the particular importance of public space in providing access and a forum where people can confront their own self imposed limitations.  Then we talked about how the IF process was their opportunity not only to research the city but see exactly what democratic engagement takes.

I’ve gone on too long, but I gave them a few minutes to talk in their groups at the end of class, and lo and behold, obstacles seemed to have moved and the last two groups had their plans in place in just a few minutes.  Stay tuned.  There may be a backlash against my strong arming them.

In case anyone was interested in the Frontline episode, I wanted to post the link here on the blog site:  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/

Folks, I am sorry I have been out of the loop for so long! It is good to see you are moving on…

I have begun to use the IF process in an upper-level class this term. The group is small (9) and pretty homogeneous:  all are anthropology majors. This is an applied (hands-on) research class and students will be using IF to discuss/decide how to approach specific research issues/questions.

I modeled the process last week when we tried to identify the general research problem/question. The approach proved very helpful. We started with (a) what are our main concerns? Moved to (b) what approaches can we use to explore them? And finally (c) what might be the implications of these choices?

Real-life constraints facilitated narrowing down the options. Most students work and commute, so we must focus on college/academic-life issues. Students don’t have too much time to conduct the research project. (We have lost 3 classes due to snow days!) Students seek to “make a difference” given the applied dimension. The discussion of approaches and implications helped us distinguish feasible/non-feasible projects.

From now on, student pairs will lead & coordinate weekly research activities exploring particular aspects. Students will be expected to use the IF approach to brainstorm/identify research strategies, perceived consequences and implications.  After the group examines possibilities & decides which route to follow, the leaders will design data collection forms and coordinate the group effort. These are my plans, of course. We will find out how it goes!

The problem is that students are a great deal more creative and engaged than we imagine.  Most times, when faculty provide discussion questions to their students, these questions are not particular robust and do not meet students where they are.  Some students may not have a full sense of what is meant by the question.  Other students may be able to think more critically and deeply than faculty imagine and may therefore be bored by the question.  Faculty talk a lot about “critical thinking,” but do we make enough space in our classrooms for this sort of thinking to happen?

The holy grail of critical thinking can, in its essence, be stated as an ability to identify a range of possible explanations, answers, questions, or possibilities and then to weigh a set of options using a rational logic.  In the digital age, it may be that the ability to imagine and to judge a range of possible explanations is needed more than ever but made increasingly elusive by the very nature of our times:  in surfing the web, reviewing emails, or managing the untold other gigabytes of information that appears before us each day, we are constantly having to make quick decisions.  Which page will I surf next?  Do I respond to this message now?  Later?  Never?  The more that information can be made succinct, the more appeal it has to us.

Could this be why big, complicated issues seem, increasingly, to come down to “obvious” conclusions that appeal to the gut instinct:  (1) Vaccines are dangerous because big corporations are marketing them without sufficient testing so that they can maximize their profits—even if it means that kids become autistic; (2) The earth is heating up, and humans’ reliance on carbon fuels is to blame; (3) A child who abuses an animal will eventually go on to be violent against people because anyone that could abuse an animal must be a cruel and dangerous person?  In fact, all of these conclusions are hardly the only possible explanations for the concerns they address.  But, anyone who is in the business of peddling opinion is well aware that the quick “gut check” is crucial:  an explanation that “just makes sense” to people is easily received—even if it’s not the best possible explanation by which to understand the data/facts.  An expedient explanation is most appealing in an age when information is seemingly never-ending.

In an effort to meet this “digital native” generation where they are, many faculty now use things like PowerPoint slides, YouTube film clips, and clicker technology that periodically asks students’ opinions or tests their factual understanding of the material being covered so as to keep lectures interesting and engaging.  The basic classroom structure largely remains, however:  the lecture hall, which was designed for a time in which texts were scarce.  Professors would literally read from the text they had so that the students could hear what the text had to say.  Multiple choice tests place a premium on the ability to memorize information.  When did you last rely on your memory for anything?  Even if I think I have remembered something correctly, I nearly always check Google to be sure I am correct.

The 21^st Century student always has access to any bit of information they could possibly want to know.  What is needed is an ability to imagine different possibilities and then to evaluate those possibilities—in effect, an ability to critically contemplate and examine the deluge of information that is constantly presented to us.  While these skills are not needed when deciding where to have lunch or which movie to watch tonight, these skills are what now distinguish the most valued workers from their counterparts and the most effective citizens from those who cannot seem to prioritize, communicate, and help to effect changes that resonate within their communities.

In the IF classroom, student-centered discussion is not characterized as students performing a teacher-generated task or series of tasks.  Instead, the students themselves are given the time and space to drive their own reflection of an area of concern—a broad question or concerns that relates to the course topic.  At first, students are very uncomfortable with the broad task at hand.  They fret:  am I doing this right?  Eventually, though, once reassured that the goal is to engage with the process rather than to do some specific task that is to be evaluated (i.e., write a quiz, test, or essay), students relax and engage with what is an exploratory, generative process.  Students are evaluated as a group by their ability to ask questions and to push their fellow students to think about the issue more deeply.

Once allowed reign to do this, students will make intriguing comments and observations and will ask provocative questions.  In fact, most faculty come to realize that a course is far richer when students are afforded space to ask questions and raise issues.  Faculty who view themselves as bearers of special knowledge who are meant to transmit insight to their students have difficulty in an IF classroom.  But, faculty who themselves as experienced mentors to their students know that students have a wonderful “beginner’s mind” and a capacity to ask remarkable questions.  The IF classroom allows students space to explore an issue and then to assess what would happen if various alternative paths were pursued.  Seldom are students given the time and space to do this sort of exploration, and yet this capacity for critical thinking is exactly the skill that they most need in the modern age.

I am glad that the course I selected for IF pedagogy – Community Psychology – seems to map well onto a discovery process, since concepts and principles that define the field are open to discussion and the skills students are learning as part of the course are useful for the practice of Community Psychology. I can imagine that if the course content I selected was more prescribed, or if I was using different reading assignments, I would have different concerns and dilemmas. I spent a lot of effort trying to design the course in a way that would allow students to do several things: 1) pursue a 3-stage IF process of developing questions, recognizing possibilities, and identifying consequences about community empowerment; 2) integrate concepts (from weekly assigned readings of primary sources); 3) develop group facilitation, note-taking, and discussion skills; and 4) apply discussion outcomes in tangible ways (students interview community advocates, research community organizations, complete reflection papers). In the first few weeks of class, students are supposed to develop questions (before moving on to possibilities and finally consequences) about community empowerment. Each week there is a “topic” for discussion which is informed by a set of readings that address related concepts. I am feeling pretty good about the potential of students to bring these elements together, although there are a lot of different things happening in the class, and I am getting a range of feedback from students about how they think it is going.

Regarding integration of content, what is different in this class from all others I have taught is that students are entirely responsible for connecting concepts from the readings with discussion content and their location in the IF process. Individual students and groups are finding their way, some better than others, with this responsibility. For the first few discussions, students were too focused on letting the concepts drive the discussion, on recording detailed notes, and on building agreement. Facilitators led discussion more than they facilitated and there was too much consensus and not enough question-asking. But every week, the facilitators and note-takers do a better job, and the quality of the discussions get better. I am also getting disparate feedback. A number of students tell me that this is the richest, most challenging experience they have ever had in college. They point out that they are making deep connections with concepts in the readings and their own experiences and they enjoy the group discovery process and the emotional bonds they are building with group members. They also see real value in learning how to work with others and hold each other responsible. At the same time, other students are bristling under or suffering from the imposed class structure. They point out that they don’t like how some group members don’t adequately prepare for discussion, or how others talk too much/talk too little. They want to bypass asking questions for posing possibilities and consequences. I am trying to encourage application of concepts, good group dynamics and proper use of the IF process in a number of ways. One way is having facilitators create a pre-facilitation outline (Laura’s brilliant idea!): the outline primes facilitators to aid discussants in applying concepts from the readings in discussion at appropriate times. Giving individual facilitators and groups feedback after each session (I complete evaluation forms for each of them), and having each group evaluate its own discussion process, also seems to be helping.

What I have observed is that the hardest thing for students to do in discussion is connecting their comments. But, when connections DO happen, a conversation occurs and students start to recognize different perspectives (transferal), incorporate concepts from the readings in ways that enrich the discussion (context setting), apply individual experiences (emotional acceptance), and produce more questions than answers (generalizing). So, I have been trying to give feedback to support these types of activities, emphasizing that this is a learning process and that they are all in this together.

As I stated before, I feel pretty good about the way the class is going. Nothing has gelled, but at least everything is moving forward. At the same time, I feel like I am juggling several balls in the air as I work with discussion groups – I have to encourage good group dynamics while supporting application of content in the midst of introducing them to a new process of learning.

I realize that I really am engaged in as much discovery as they are. We will see if my enthusiasm and anticipation hold up in the midst of this juggling act.

The participants on the other panel are chosen both for their willingness to engage in collaborative and exploratory discussions, and for their ability to open up some particular dimension of the discussion topic. These are people who have had some substantive engagement with a particular aspect of the area of concern. This engagement might come from their research, from their work, or from their professional training and experience. This focused engagement should enable them to open up different perspectives on the area of concern. Because of their ability to open up these specialized perspectives, the group is often called a “Specialist Panel.”

In our Project Discussions our expectations for “Specialists” differ from the typical role of “Experts” in many conventional policy discussions. In many policy discussions people expect to hear from Experts in order to settle disputes and end deliberations. Experts can give us answers. They can tell us the way things are. In our IF Project Discussions, however, we look to our Specialists not to close down discussions, but, rather, to open up new lines of questioning. Instead of simply providing answers, we look to our Specialists to help the panel to expand and develop the questions that we, as a society, might have to grapple with regarding the area of concern. We look to our Specialists to help open up new perspectives on the area of concern. We want them to help the rest of the panel to uncover new or different dimensions of the area of concern, dimensions the panel might not otherwise discover.

Of course, we want our Specialists to share what they know. We assume that their thinking will be informed by the knowledge they’ve gained. But we don’t want them to confine themselves to reporting on what they know, telling us the way things are from their specialized vantage points. We want them to use that knowledge about the way things are, or have been, to help the panel to think about the way things could be—to develop alternative visions of different possible futures. By opening up divergent perspectives, Specialists can enrich the project discussions both by helping the panel to see more dimensions of the area of concern and by helping the panel to envision alternative ways to address these through public policy or other forms of social action.

–Jeff Prudhomme

My class is at the half-way point with Spring Break next week. I feel like it’s going well, but I continue to feel up in the air about how all the parts are fitting together and how the IF part of the class is going. Yesterday we had a literature day, with a student presentation on “Party in the USA” (what is the party exactly, and why is Miley going to it in those Daisy Dukes?) followed by a discussion of Louise Erdrich’s “Fleur” and “Dear John Wayne” (how is Erdrich challenging “traditional” definitions of American identity, power, and truth?). I left the class feeling like we’d had a great discussion, wide and deep.

On Tuesday, we’d had our last IF class before break, and I felt more uncertain about it. I asked each of the three groups to summarize their discussions so far by bringing in their working descriptions of what it means to be American. Each group’s summary showed they’ve been thinking about the topic, and I’ve observed that almost all the students have been engaged in the discussions and worked to move them forward. I would’ve liked to have seen more depth in their descriptions, and we talked about that as a class on Tuesday. A concrete example: one of the groups mentioned citizenship in their definition and that led us to a discussion on Tuesday of the rights and responsibilities of citizens similar to the one we had at the SI last summer. They clearly hadn’t thought about these issues, and I felt both that I didn’t blame them for not doing so and that I wished they had.

I decided when I designed the course to have a “self-contained” IF process not directly tied to the literature we’re reading. I’m not sure I made the right choice. Their project is to describe what it means to be American, then to think about what the group wants to preserve/change about the country, and finally to come up with steps to help that preservation/change happen. I very much value the idea of students claiming ownership of their IF project and seeing it as coming from them. I also, though, want to challenge/help them to think as deeply as they can about these issues and come up with the best answers they can. Maybe I’m asking them to come up with policy ideas without providing them with/asking them to research information and ideas to enable them to answer the questions with any sophistication.

I’m well aware that part of my problem is that I’m going through this process for the first time. As Dickinson said, “Hope is a thing with feathers.” I’m trying to trust that the students are learning, even if they’re not learning exactly how or what I’d envisioned. I had a good talk with Sue this morning about the class. I told her that I did feel confident that the students are really exploring what it means to facilitate a discussion (a skill I don’t think any of them have explicitly been asked to work on) and that they are learning from each other. Sue also pointed out that in moving  forward in the process of coming up with specific suggestions for America, they may well reflect back and deepen their ideas about who we are. I do look forward to seeing where they end up.

I see my main work as staying tuned in to the balance of giving the students the freedom to have their own discussions and stepping in to give them advice and strategies to move the discussions forward. But first Spring Break.

Trying to create discussion groups by recruiting individuals is hugely time consuming.  And the groups fall apart without constant tending.  This is because discussion is rarely glue enough to hold groups together. This is why it almost always makes sense to start with groups that are already there, that have their own religious, social, economic, political, or recreational reasons for existing.  We’ve had it all wrong: rather than building our own social capital, we should be building on that of other groups.

If we do, we will be relieved—more or less permanently—of the need to pitch, sell, and explain the IF Process.  Our community contacts will do that for us.  We won’t have to do it 101 times on the phone or via email to get people to participate.  And, once we’re in the same room, we’ll be able to get on with the discussions.

If we do, we can build on the shared values and connections in the room, rather than thinking we need to create them.

If we do, we can look forward to repeat invitations—the group will still be there, held together not only or primarily by its interest in discussion but by whatever brought it together in the first place.

The community organizer who can deliver public discussion groups at the drop of a hat is the El Dorado of facilitating public discussions.  You can become that person if you work hard at it.  Or you can go find one.  I found mine at the local Rotary club.  She is willing to use her connections for me because she trusts me personally and endorses our work.  She’s the bridge between me and the community.  People here respond to IF invitations not because they know me or IF or have a burning need for civic discussion; they respond because my contact asks them to.

It’s not what you know.  .  .

In the best of all possible worlds, a debate might actually be an ideal way to explore and develop ideas. There, debaters would always be completely open to other points of view. No one would be interested in defending his point of view–let alone beyond the point of no return–and everyone would try his best not only to understand other points of view, but to strengthen them as well. This, however, seldom if ever happens in the real world. Here, the element of competition kicks in, and it exerts an unfortunate influence. Debates in the real world are more like sporting contests between opposing players and teams. Debates, as we know them, are all about winning points, defending one’s own position come what may, and attacking opposing positions regardless of whether or not anyone understands them. Indeed, the very term ‘debate’ can be traced to an old French word that means ‘to fight’. So if a debater in the real world says that he wants to explore and develop his opponent’s idea, you can rest assured that it is the first step in a protracted argument designed to knock it out.

The purpose of a debate is to have ideas fight it out to determine which is the strongest. But it is easy to defeat an idea if the fight occurs before it has grown strong enough to defend itself. And the purpose of an IF discussion is see what ideas for addressing an area of concern are out there–and to strengthen them so that they are stronger than they were when you originally found them. The purpose of a debate is to put an end to a discussion. But the purpose of an IF discussion is to develop ideas so they will foster its thoughtful continuation. Our purpose is not to determine which policy possibilities are the most fit to survive. And it is not to resolve an issue once and for all. It is to explore a wide-range of policy possibilities and to develop them as best we can so that the ones that eventually survive public scrutiny will be actually worth pursuing.

This is the reason why IF facilitators try to prevent discussions from becoming debates. The task is a difficult one–partly because it is often difficult to know where discussion leaves off and debate begins, and partly because people who are interested in public policy often take pleasure in a good fight. So I typically let my panelists explore their differences when they disagree. But when I see them set their jaws and begin to repeat themselves, I gently remind them that our task is not to debate the issue, let alone to settle it once and for all, but to see whether it will be useful for public discussion. And this is typically enough to set them back on the right track.