Taxonomy of Conversation: Reflection
Reflection is the third of four types of conversation. How do we experience each type online?
Here is what I wrote three Wednesdays ago:
Reflection is where we listen from inside and hear ourselves reflexively and others with empathy. It invites the listener to try on the insights of the other person to see if they might work for them. It invites a more subjective understanding of unfamiliar points of view.
Is this possible online?
Any learning experience that encourages participants to apply their learning must do this. Learning new skills and applying them always involves reflection.
Some online marketers claim marketing and learning are the same. Their model is reflective conversation. They don’t always achieve it and their results vary because learners vary.
A simple example. I find as a coach to people designing and writing content for their website, they need to put themselves into their readers’ shoes. When someone visits their site, how do they experience it?
Plenty of tools enable online conversation and a big advantage is conversations can take place across great distances at low-cost. Here are some examples:
- Use Skype for one-to-one or one-to-few coaching.
- Google Hangouts are another example.
- Both can be used for masterminds, similar to coaching but with no coach as such. Each member participates in coaching the others.
- Teleseminars, webinars, webcasts and the like can sometimes encourage reflective learning. As these can have very large audiences they can be less interactive and so less effective at reflective learning.
Of course, all these tools and approaches depend crucially upon content. A webinar for 1000 people will be less reflective but it still depends upon its content. It is not adequate to simply explain how to do something. It is important to be inspirational, in the sense of inspiring viewers to take action. This does mean you must encourage participants to try something new. Learning from experience is central to reflective learning.
Participants can share results and the outcome can be shared discovery and not so much debate.
Can you share an example of reflective online learning or conversation? Is online learning ever as effective as real life learning? Can online and offline learning be combined to support reflective learning?