Keypad technology

Examples

In the following example, keypads were used to create a dialogue to help overcome misconceptions during a community conflict.

“The staff of an urban library system convened some focus group dialogues that were part of an assessment of the library’s challenges. Within the library’s culture, there had already been some evidence of a disagreement between those who thought that the library was making too many adjustments to cater to its changing demographics of people with lower reading levels versus those who thought the library should return to its original mission of serving accomplished readers. Among the initial questions, a question asked participants to assess the library’s importance as a community educational institution. There was some variation in the answers provided, but not surprisingly, the answers were heavily skewed toward the answers “very important” and “important”. This finding was used by the facilitator later to remind the participants there was a consensus the library was important, and the conflict was about how it should accomplish the mission of community education, not whether it should.

This dynamic is not unusual. In our experience, community or organizational conflicts often can be broadly described as between “complainers” whose focus is on advocating changes in direction, and “boosters”, who favor tweaks but oppose major changes. In a continuing conflict, these camps often begin to view one another as enemies and can ascribe nefarious motivations (such as self-interest) to the other side. In such cases, …[the] task of facilitators is to infuse the dialogic container with the awareness that both sides of the conflict share a concern for the setting.” (Campt & Freeman, 2009)