Sam Richards creating World in Conversation site fostering dialogue on social issues

Sam Richards, senior lecturer in sociology, is building a World in Conversation Web site at http://www.worldinconversation.org/ to serve as a hub pointing to six sub-sites that feature dialogue on issues crucial to society but often difficult to discuss. He is pursuing the project as a 2010 Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) Faculty Fellow. Collaborating with Richards is his wife, Laurie Mulvey, lecturer in sociology.

In addition to developing the new site, during the fellowship, Richards will also be redesigning aspects of his SOC 119 Race and Ethnic Relations course. Both the course organization and assignments will be reworked. Because the class had over 700 students each semester, not every student could participate in the weekly discussion groups because there were not enough facilitators. Richards is now considering having each group meet every two weeks instead, allowing the same number of facilitators to meet with more groups and thus be able to include every student in the class.

For both the Web site and the course redesign, Richards and Mulvey are drawing on the expertise of a team from TLT consisting of Allan Gyorke, Erin Long, and Jeff Swain.

Gyorke noted that the opportunity for staff to work so closely with a faculty member "is great professional development for us because we dig into some transformative pedagogical issues. It's where the technology and pedagogy approaches come together, with results we wouldn't have been able to come up with on our own." He added that from the perspective of Richards and Mulvey, "They get a fresh perspective on a course they've taught twenty years."

The new "umbrella" Web site will outline the mission and philosophy behind the various types of dialogue taking place on the sub-sites it will link out to. As Richards summarized that mission, "I want to wake people up. I want them to see and experience awakening, to see through the outer shell to the sparks within." The site will also feature videos and links to more information.

One of the sub-sites the new site will point to is the Race Relations Project (http://www.racerelationsproject.org) codirected by Richards and Mulvey. The longstanding project encourages not only students in SOC 119 to converse candidly about race issues, but also Penn State students from any discipline. Last year, over 900 conversations moderated by student facilitators took place as part of the project. Richards and Mulvey are now working on expanding the project to include all campus locations, but they are still considering a number of factors. A potential plan is to assign two University Park student facilitators and one local facilitator to lead discussion groups for each campus. The discussions would likely take place over a Polycom videoconference. However, the Faculty Fellow team is still discussing the limitations of videoconferencing versus face-to-face conversation for group dynamics.

Another Web site that will be incorporated into the World in Conversation site is the Getting Life blog (http://www.gettinglife.info/), featuring reflective posts written by prisoners serving life sentences. Richards, who along with Mulvey has visited with prisoners, noted, "That may be the coolest thing that we’re doing." A post there entitled "Letter from an Inmate" is an example of the eye-opening posts with which the Getting Life blog will be populated. Last April, Richards shared that letter with his class, setting off a great deal of discussion.

A project still in the planning stages that will be featured on another subsite is called West Meets Middle East. Richards is coordinating with colleagues currently working in the Palestinian Territories to arrange a dialogue between Jewish students at Penn State and Palestinian university students. The Faculty Fellow team is still working out the details such as whether the dialogue will take place just once or on several occasions, and whether they will use Skype or some other type of videoconferencing technology. They are also considering asking the students to write blog posts and comments to generate further discussion.

Other World in Conversation sub-sites will feature dialogue on global programs, drinking culture, and gender.

Richards explained that previously, he and Mulvey were trying to incorporate information on other types of dialogue such as West Meets Middle East into the Race Relations Project site, but they felt all their "conversation" initiatives needed to have a more organized Web presence. They are drawing on the expertise of the Faculty Fellow team to help ensure the new World in Conversation site will help visitors easily locate information.

Mulvey said she hopes the new site will allow them to be more creative. She explained, "The more conversations we do, and the more variety of conversations that we have, our students grow more because they learn how to facilitate conversations in all kinds of subjects. They learn more about themselves and about different issues." Mulvey pointed out that a person has different personas in different kinds of conversations; you may be a representative of a particular race in one conversation, an American in another, of a gender in another, etc. "It'’s not like in every conversation I'm the same person," she said.

When asked about the fundamental idea behind promoting conversation on "touchy" subjects rather than avoiding any risk of conflict, Mulvey said, "I think that once you actually get into the touchy issues, they're not as touchy. We don't have to avoid as much as we think we have to avoid. I watch it happen with myself and with other people. People are tense. You can see the body language when it starts and then all of a sudden, they are able to speak more clearly. They can look each other in the eyes."

She said that she and Richards have learned to trust candid conversations through their own experiences, and that inspired them to get other people involved in conversations. "I know that if we just tweak things a little bit, we're going to be able to make contact with one another and see the humanity in the person or the ethic that they're basing their decision on. They're not a bad person; they just see it differently. For me, the value of having an uncomfortable conversation is so much greater than the value of not doing it," said Mulvey.

Over the course of summer 2010, members of Richards's Faculty Fellow team are posting updates and reflections about the project at the TLT Faculty Fellows blog site at http://blogs.tlt.psu.edu/fellows/. To learn more about the TLT Faculty Fellows program, visit http://tlt.its.psu.edu/faculty/fellowship.