Enhancement or new type of Dialogue

Enhancement or new type of Dialogue

by Rosario Carcò -
Number of replies: 7
I sent a message to Teresa, but did not receive any answer yet.

So let me ask you if you were interested in the following Enhancement, Alternative or New Dialogue:

Some colleagues of mine developed a system to closely discuss and accompany the students in a sort of socratic dialogue. (I found a good argumentation to do it this way here on moodle: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=124117#p546298)

So this type of socratic dialogue is based upon self-reflection more than on grading what the student does, more on "taking the student by the hand" to direct and to accompany him/her to the desired goal. The way to go is more important than any final grade.

The workflow is as follows:

  • The Teacher opens a dialogue with a single student (a group of students could also be an option) and types in a question, a case to study, something to reflect or to investigate on AND he types in also a sample solution which will be presented later in the workflow.
  • The Student accesses the dialogue, reads the task to accomplish, does all of his research, reflection, etc. and finally types in his solution.
  • After sending in his solution he gets automatically back "the solution" as proposed by the teacher. Now his second task is to reflect this solution, to compare it with his own one and to eventually propose a new or corrected solution, based on his self-reflection.
  • After the Teacher gets also the self-reflection, he will ponder the students' solution and his self-reflected one and write a final feed-back, as you can do in the lesson module with the essay question type.
Could we take this approach for a very general case study or socratic dialogue, for cases that go beyond a solution being a "simple" formula. For problems and questions that need rather a discussion in an essay manner than a multiple choice or Yes/No or even short answer approach?

Should we enhance the existing Dialogue with a forking option, like:

- Type of Dialogue: standard (as actually is) - socratic (as workflow just given)

Or should we create a new module, let's say socraticDialogue or the like?

We are open for any suggestions. Thanks a lot, Rosario
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In reply to Rosario Carcò

Re: Enhancement or new type of Dialogue

by Robert Brenstein -
The answer to this may depend on how much common code is between your socratic dialog and the standard dialog. If little, having two modules would make more sense. Otherwise, the approach used by the assignment module could be utilized.
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In reply to Robert Brenstein

Re: Enhancement or new type of Dialogue

by Rosario Carcò -
Thanks, but the assignment activity should be reworked, because it stickst to tight to a one-way workflow and communication model, no dialogue, no feedback but grades.

The existing Dialogue and Project, maybe even Workshop modules have already built in two-way communications closer to a dialogue, from which could be deduced our socraticDialogue, if it were to be a separate new activity.

Rosario
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In reply to Rosario Carcò

Re: Enhancement or new type of Dialogue

by Robert Brenstein -
I did not mean activity flow but programming implementation of the assignment module and its submodules.
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In reply to Rosario Carcò

Re: Enhancement or new type of Dialogue

by Teresa Gibbison -
Hi Rosario
I did receive your IM and apologise for not replying blush

I have your message flagged to look at, I had a very quick look but need to revisit it to provide full feedback. It does sounds like what you are proposing would suit a new activity rather than a modification of the Dialogue (which is intended as simply a one-to-one communication option with no option for grading - that would be the assignment and/or forum's responsibility).

I also agree with Robert at this stage that looking at the code behind the dialogue & the assignment (also perhaps the Workshop) would help with regard to seeing which parts can be used for this.

Cheers
Teresa
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In reply to Teresa Gibbison

Re: Enhancement or new type of Dialogue

by Rosario Carcò -
Ok, then I will start programming our socraticDialogue as proposed in the workflow in my first post.

I will report back, when I have a running prototype.

Thanks a lot, Rosario
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In reply to Rosario Carcò

Re: Enhancement or new type of Dialogue

by Enrique Castro -
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Hi, Rosario:
Your "socratic Dialogue" idea is really interesting. Probably we all are using that workflow in real teaching but using separate tools (assignment+forum, + e-mail etc.) It is a good idea to get it integrated in a single module.

What you are proposing is esentially an assignment: the student must realize a task and get graded. With the tutoring or "socartic" steps in between.

If you are starting from scratch I would dare to suggest two options different from Dialogue. Dialogue is a "communication" module or tool, it has NO assesment component. Adding it could be counter-productive if students fear their questions will garde agains them. In addition, Dialogue module as it is have NO provision in code for assesment and grading.

You could use Assignment module and just build a new Assignment Type. Assignment types are pluggable and can take advantage of a lot of infrastructure form parent module. You just need to add the key steps in your workflow
a) The automatic sending of "teacher solution"
b) The re-sending of

You may realize the two-step submission and the "notes" feature of some advanced assignment subtypes. Your features can build from that already existing code.

Otherwise, you may modify a Q&R FORUM. In thsi type of forum (already working) the teacher start a therad with a post that describes a problem. The students answer with a solution. But a a student CANNOT see the prior answers by other colleagues, only after he/she has sent his own answer.

Adding the "automatic solution" capability would not we difficult. Forums do have grading infraestructure. And being a Forum the potential is there to expand discussion to more than two cycles of interaction student-teacher and to other students.
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In reply to Enrique Castro

Re: Enhancement or new type of Dialogue

by Rosario Carcò -

Thanks a lot for your suggestions, Enrique.

AS you can see, I was very busy with other problems, first porting our production server to a VMware ESX virtual machine, which did not work (I had to remigrate back everything onto the physical server). Then in January 2010 we decided to migrate to a new physical server which is done now. In the last days I had time to continue development on two blocks of mine myCourses and siteNavigation.

I have still more work on those blocks because I am going to merge them into one block. Then I hope to find time to develop this socraticDialogue. This will be a module with NO grades because the solution of a problem is searched in a step by step process, the socratic dialogue between teacher and student.

Rosario

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