I’m a big fan of peer-based learning, especially online discussion forums. I learned a lot of what I know about multimedia design from asking and answering questions in newsgroups over the years.

Limitations of Forums

While forums are a great way to reach out to a community with questions, forums aren’t as good at delineating “either/or” type questions, since all answers are rolled-up into the same, single-column thread. This makes identifying contrasting viewpoints a challenge.

CreateDebate.com

CreateDebate offers a twist on traditional online forums by creating two-sided, parallel conversations. A single topic is presented and users choose their side by replying in one of the two columns.

Users can add arguments for, or against, the topic, or respond directly to others’ positions. Users can also vote arguments up or down. In theory, weak or unsubstantiated positions would move further down the thread while stronger arguments move up.

Forum Debates as a Change Management Tool

For managers, forum debates could provide valuable insight for identifying early adopters, influencers and laggards in the department. This insight could then guide change management conversations and strategies.

Learning design teams can use forum debates to introduce new initiatives such as rapid e-learning, social learning technologies or even virtual worlds for learning.

For example, forum debates could be used to introduce rapid models using SMEs as content developers by asking, “Should instructional designers or SMEs be responsible for creating rapid e-learning courses?”

There are probably designers who never considered SMEs as possible developers. But the nature of the question implies someone thinks SMEs could be developers. The topic provides an opening for designers to debate the use of SMEs in the development process while providing management an opportunity to identify where to focus change management efforts.

I’d like to see the option to create a third viewpoint for less black and white topics. Anyway, try it out and see what you think.

Would such a forum work as a learning tool?

———-

Update: Last year Tony Karrer wrote about a Fight in the Blogosphere where informal learning was under attack. This is precisely the type of conversation that could benefit from a structured, two-sided debate.