Introduction to Collaborative Discussion – Session 3 of an Online Course

This is the third of five sessions for ‘Introduction to Collaborative Discussion,” an online course that the Interactivity Foundation is facilitating in partnership with the Diversity Relations Council at Leisure World in Silver Spring, Maryland. In this course, registered participants meet weekly online via Zoom. The five class discussions for this course are participatory, interactive, and additive—they build on the ideas discussed and developed in prior sessions by the participants.

In this third session, participants will be introduced to and try out a couple exercises in “Critical Collaboration” (Module 3 of the Collaborative Discussion Toolkit). In this session, participants will reflect on how their habits of thinking, emotionally responding, and general communication have been conditioned and may even impede working with others effectively. Over time we have learned how to think and communicate about certain issues which may act as blinders and prevent us from seeing issues more fully. The activities in this module can help groups pause and critically question their way of engaging certain topics in order to improve collaboration.