Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Bill Warters on October 22, 2011 at 7:27pm

To get the ball rolling, I'm posting this publicly available video produced as a student class project by Carla Cross, Karen Hamilton and Debbie Plested at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. They used a free tool called MovieStorm (moviestorm.co.uk) to animate the characters involved in a mock mediation conducted using avatars. I don't know how to reach them for comment, but I'd have to say I personally think it was a pretty nice student group project.

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Permalink Reply by Colin Rule on October 24, 2011 at 10:39am

Very cool -- reminds me of the peer mediation in second life experiment from 2006:

rah

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Permalink Reply by Bill Warters on October 24, 2011 at 11:04am

Thanks Colin. Good connection. At risk of moving us away from strictly student produced work, your post reminded me of the EU-based project known as Avatar@School   http://www.avataratschool.eu In this project, roleplay scripts are created to explore issues of bullying and mistreatment online, which are then played out in a secure OpenSim environment.  There is a briefing paper about the project over at Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/Links-up/case-study-avatarschool

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Permalink Reply by Kevin McAlpine on October 24, 2011 at 11:13am

This was a great video to walk someone through a dispute resolution scenario. I wonder if there is any merit in creating an avatar based followup to an actual face to face resolution as if it was a set of meeting minutes to be reviewed by both parties.

Bill Warters said:

To get the ball rolling, I'm posting this publicly available video produced as a student class project by Carla Cross, Karen Hamilton and Debbie Plested at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. They used a free tool called MovieStorm (moviestorm.co.uk) to animate the characters involved in a mock mediation conducted using avatars. I don't know how to reach them for comment, but I'd have to say I personally think it was a pretty nice student group project.

 

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Aresty on October 24, 2011 at 12:09pm

Interesting and extremely well done- I did find it a bit ironic that what students are doing in this clip is utilizing really cool technology and avatars to walk through a face to face dispute resolution scenario. Of course, the stages of dispute resolution may be the same whether the dispute resolution process is done face to face or online.   But I do think it is important to keep the distinction in mind - what are we using technology for in the dispute resolution setting?   Is it to facilitate existing processes with new tools?  Or, are we looking for ways to tranform the dispute resolution process itself?  Just one final thought at this early stage in the conversation:  doesn't technology give us the chance to reinvent the role that 'communications' plays to maintain relationships, avoid disputes all together?  Is that what we should be teaching? 

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Diliana Stoyanova on October 24, 2011 at 1:11pm

Hi everyone! This is the first year that I have decided to actively participate in ODR week, so I hope my contribution makes sense to someone. 

To add my thoughts on the conflict mediation project to what Jeff said above, maybe another question we should be asking is where the conflict originated. Is it an online-based interaction (ie e-commerce, e-learning, etc.) that uses online tools to mediate a dispute, or is it a face-to-face conflict that uses ODR? If technology is used to facilitate online-based relationships, then the communication process itself doesn't change, does it? It seems to me that the avatars diversify the technological representation of human interaction (just like emoticons), which could help or deter problem-solving, but in the end, if the people that started the interaction did so in front of computers, then during the dispute and the dispute resolution they will still be people using computers to communicate. If the problem started with a face-to-face dispute, then technology would be the new parameter to the interaction. Or even more interesting, if people use both in their interaction, then ... any thoughts?

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Permalink Reply by Bill Warters on October 24, 2011 at 2:25pm

Interesting idea there Kevin. In a sense, using avatars to ritually enact or memorialize an agreement made perhaps only in text. For some reason it reminded me of the woven wampum belts that the Iroquois Confederacy used to memorialize a largely oral agreement so that it could be bought back to memory later and passed along. Hmm...what is the modern digital equivalent of a wampum belt?

Kevin McAlpine said:

This was a great video to walk someone through a dispute resolution scenario. I wonder if there is any merit in creating an avatar based followup to an actual face to face resolution as if it was a set of meeting minutes to be reviewed by both parties.

Bill Warters said:

To get the ball rolling, I'm posting this publicly available video produced as a student class project by Carla Cross, Karen Hamilton and Debbie Plested at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. They used a free tool called MovieStorm (moviestorm.co.uk) to animate the characters involved in a mock mediation conducted using avatars. I don't know how to reach them for comment, but I'd have to say I personally think it was a pretty nice student group project.

 

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Permalink Reply by Bill Warters on October 24, 2011 at 2:32pm

Hi Diliana. Good to have you involved. Your point about the difference it makes regarding where the original conflict occurred certainly makes sense to me. In the first video example, the hypothetical conflict was one involving students who only know each other from interactions in an online course, not face to face, but now they are using avatars to enact a more familiar scenario of a face to face mediation or problem solving session. Jeff's point, it seems to me, is that we don't want to be driven to just replicate face-to-face models to the detriment of new "born digital" ways of working through conflict. I certainly agree with that as well. I also hear you calling attention to the fact that avatars are a form of representation that can carry with it personal preferences and biases (in terms of how you might represent your "opponent" in an online space if they aren't visually representing themselves), for better or worse. Interesting stuff, that.

Diliana Stoyanova said:

Hi everyone! This is the first year that I have decided to actively participate in ODR week, so I hope my contribution makes sense to someone. 

To add my thoughts on the conflict mediation project to what Jeff said above, maybe another question we should be asking is where the conflict originated. Is it an online-based interaction (ie e-commerce, e-learning, etc.) that uses online tools to mediate a dispute, or is it a face-to-face conflict that uses ODR? If technology is used to facilitate online-based relationships, then the communication process itself doesn't change, does it? It seems to me that the avatars diversify the technological representation of human interaction (just like emoticons), which could help or deter problem-solving, but in the end, if the people that started the interaction did so in front of computers, then during the dispute and the dispute resolution they will still be people using computers to communicate. If the problem started with a face-to-face dispute, then technology would be the new parameter to the interaction. Or even more interesting, if people use both in their interaction, then ... any thoughts?

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Permalink Reply by Bill Warters on October 24, 2011 at 2:39pm

Okay, time to serve up another student work. I'm going to "pick on" our colleague Colin Rule and share a piece that he developed during his days as an undergraduate at Haverford College working with their peer mediation program. He offered a critique of collegiate peer mediation programs with respect to who controls and manages them and what kind of issues they focus on in this piece - http://www.creducation.org/resources/4thR_1994_v50_Rule.pdf  - I guess it is a stretch to connect this to ODR but perhaps we should be thinking about student "owned" processes for resolving online conflicts and what they might look like or do look like in practice. Do they or might they privilege interpersonal conflicts at the expense of naming and addressing structural conflicts?

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Thompson on October 24, 2011 at 8:41pm

Bill (& everyone),

 

While reading the above it reminded me of a paper I wrote (and posted here) about how an University Ombuds office can embrace technology to help its students and faculty involved in conflicts and disputes.  I think using F2F synchronous technology should be an option- like adding another spoke to the conflict resolution wheel of options- not a replacement.

Specifically, on the University level, an ombuds and mediation program that offers services online can be an added benefit.

 

Thoughts?

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Permalink Reply by Bill Warters on October 24, 2011 at 9:45pm

Hi Jeff. Thanks so much for sharing your paper. So many good pieces of work done while people are students ends up hidden away somewhere and we miss the benefits. I've downloaded it and look forward to a closer review. Seems like with Microsoft having purchased Skype and Apple pushing FaceTime, video access is destined to become widespread. By the way, I'm not sure the web page/link title typo "Omduds" is going to catch on with organizational problem solvers! Maybe we should aim for "Omstuds" instead? That is probably too likely to get censored by filters...

Jeff Thompson said:

Bill (& everyone),

 

While reading the above it reminded me of a paper I wrote (and posted here) about how an University Ombuds office can embrace technology to help its students and faculty involved in conflicts and disputes.  I think using F2F synchronous technology should be an option- like adding another spoke to the conflict resolution wheel of options- not a replacement.

Specifically, on the University level, an ombuds and mediation program that offers services online can be an added benefit.

 

Thoughts?

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Permalink Reply by Jeannine Simpson on October 24, 2011 at 9:47pm

It would be very helpful to play this during the practicum training.  It is very clear, concise and shows how easily the steps flow together. 

Kevin McAlpine said:

This was a great video to walk someone through a dispute resolution scenario. I wonder if there is any merit in creating an avatar based followup to an actual face to face resolution as if it was a set of meeting minutes to be reviewed by both parties.

Bill Warters said:

To get the ball rolling, I'm posting this publicly available video produced as a student class project by Carla Cross, Karen Hamilton and Debbie Plested at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. They used a free tool called MovieStorm (moviestorm.co.uk) to animate the characters involved in a mock mediation conducted using avatars. I don't know how to reach them for comment, but I'd have to say I personally think it was a pretty nice student group project.

 

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