My current research focus is on supporting higher quality dialogue in online interactions. Currently we are focussing on supporting the skills and behaviors needed to deal successfully with situations involving diverse or conflicting ideas, goals, values, or world-views. We call these the “social deliberative skills” that, in the best cases, citizens and professionals use in contexts with multiple stakeholders. We have been experimenting with software features intended to gently support skills such as self-reflection, perspective taking, and meta-dialogue. We are experimenting with tools that support participants in collaboration and dispute resolution, and are also tools that support facilitators or mediators. As part of this work we are also developing computational techniques for recognizing deliberative skill and other indicators of dialogue quality in online communications. In addition to this recent research I have worked for many years in adaptive learning environment and intelligent tutoring systems.
