Democracy Lab: An Online Deliberative Learning Community for High Schools and Colleges

James Knauer
Center for Civic Life, Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania

*Lawrence Ross
Center for Civic Life, Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania

*Kimberly Powell
Pennsylvania State University

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     Last modified: March 15, 2005

Abstract
Democracy Lab (www.teachingdemocracy.org) from the Center for Civic Life at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania is a web-based resource for fostering active learning, promoting civic engagement, developing civic leadership and transforming campus climate. Grounded in dialogic pedagogy, Democracy Lab structures and facilitates deliberative forums that provide rich opportunities for student-to-student teaching and learning. Forums on a variety of public issues are adopted by college instructors across the country for courses in a wide range of disciplines. Non-partisan issue frameworks provide a textual foundation for ten weeks of asynchronous small-group dialogue (available 24/7) that leads students from dialogue to inquiry to action.
Some students who encounter Democracy Lab in a course continue their involvement through successive developmental levels. Democracy Lab student civic leadership teams, online interns and research assistants gain increasing proficiency in deliberative dialogue and civic leadership. Throughout these stages of involvement, students participate in both dialogue and meta-dialogue, a natural part of their engagement in a learning community which integrates practice and research. Formative and summative evaluation, as well as more traditional research in several disciplines, are a natural part of the Democracy Lab learning community. Current research projects are supported by the Kettering Foundation and CIRCLE.
Democracy Lab is supported by a three-year, $450,541 grant from the U.S. Department of Education Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) and by Association of American Colleges and Universities, American Association of State Colleges and Universities – American Democracy Project, Campus Compact, Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts, National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation, and The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars. Funding is available for institutional partnerships.
This workshop will begin with an introduction to the Democracy Lab online learning environment, its content, structures, processes and objectives. The use of announcements and exercises to teach and guide deliberative dialogue will be explained and illustrated. The special functions of group reports, news room, library and citizen action room will be explained and discussed. Examples from dialogue transcripts (both encouraging and discouraging) will be shared as a basis for discussing the capacity of this online learning environment to promoting dialogic learning that integrates the traditional aims of liberal education and education for strong citizenship.
Our work is informed by various research literatures, including civic education, cognitive development and discourse analysis. Qualitative analysis of dialogue transcripts is being used to study the multi-dimensional capacities involved in the deliberative learning process. Our evolving coding categories and illustrative dialogue samples will be presented for discussion. In a sense all of our research is ongoing formative evaluation. Working on a semester schedule, everything we learn each semester finds its way into our tinkering with content, processes and structures as we prepare for the next semester. Workshop participants will be invited to join this process of reflection and redesign.