Virtual dialogue

Dialogue can also take place between people who do not meet in the same physical space and therefore use virtual media to communicate. This is not just a means for those who can not meet in the same space, but also offers advantages for people who can meet in the same space. Those advantages are based on the experience that quite often people speak more freely when they do not face the other people in the conversation (for one, hierarchy is know to be downscaled in such a setting) and offer more creativity.
Virtual dialogue works best if the participants have in fact met in the ordinary sense and developed a certain level of trust with each other. If this is not possible, for instance due to geographical circumstances, this familiarization and trust can be accomplished in the virtual space, but it does need appropriate attention.

Fast virtual dialogue: the chatroom

A chatroom is a medium through which the participants visit the same virtual space at the same time to discuss a particular topic. Typically, it has to be seen as a regular meeting, where you have an item to discuss, documents to study beforehand and a certain desired outcome (in the training, the outcome may also be to practice a different way of exchanging ideas). Due to the nature of the chatroom, this type of dialogue requires fast response. There is no time to think about what would be the most acceptable answer, as that is immediately perceived as “holding back”. One is strongly invited to bring out what comes to mind immediately after it comes to mind (of course, facilitation has to reward this).

No rush virtual dialogue

This type of virtual dialogue, often called ‘forum’, is ideally suited to people in different time-zones, as one does not have to log on at the same time. It is characterized by a certain topic on a website that one can comment on, and which invites the comments of others. What distinguishes this type of dialogue from the chatroom type is that in this case there is no rush to comment, so the comments can be studied and detailed. The focus would be more on content, less on human interaction

E-learning: the case for blended learning

E-learning is best done in the form of blended learning. This means that the virtual component of the learning (submitting work on a website, perhaps group discussions in a chatroom, working in small teams in a closed off space of the website, etc) is combined with training activities in the more classic sense: in a room with a whiteboard and/or flip-over. This is because in this way the opportunities of both types of training can be combined. Also, it is more efficient (experience shows that e-learning works best if the participants also have to actually face each other).