2020-2022 Virtual Deliberation Initiative

Initiative Description

UHD CPD will be sponsoring a three-year virtual deliberation initiative in order to both do and learn about effective virtual deliberation.

Initiative Goals

• Grow more connected, mutually beneficial relationships with community members, partners and institutions (including non-profits and corporations) external to higher education.
• Build active, democratic engagement skills in our college students, such as collaborative decision-making, critical thinking, public judgment, and self-knowledge.
• Hone “transferable skills” or “soft skills,” the skills that employers rate as most essential for college graduates they hire.
• Explore the opportunities and best practices associated with the “borderless” features of virtual deliberation amongst students.
• Discover more about the quality and character of deliberative practice for student virtual deliberation in zoom rooms
• Consider the unique features of online deliberative practice to help facilitate habits of citizenship and course material engagement.

Participants

Our goal is at least 80 deliberation participants, split evenly across the campuses involved. These students may come from course offerings or co-curricular experiences, depending on the constraints and opportunities of the campus partners involved in our initiative (which will be determined in spring 2022). In addition, we will use paired facilitation teams from both Wabash and UHD, allowing an opportunity for studying advanced deliberative pedagogy in students who are trained for facilitation. Finally, in developing a pre- and post-survey for deliberation participations, we will also test that survey with non-participating cohorts at each campus partner in order to compare and learn about the similarities and differences between their experiences.