The team at UMass-Ahmerst who have worked on the NSF-funded Social Deliberative Skills project have now released their final report.  They also have a summary and helpful infographic here: http://socialdeliberativeskills.com/NSFSummary.html

The team explains the wider relevance of their project this way:

“Our unobtrusive scaffolding methods and facilitator dashboard concepts will transfer to use in collaborative work, civic engagement, and online dispute resolution.  Discussion forums and commenting features are widely used in educational contexts and social media, but little exists to support higher quality deliberation in these environments. Our methods should also be applicable to “flipped” classrooms and MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) environments, which are in need of better tools for interaction, dialogue, and management. We also believe that social deliberative skills practiced online will transfer to other contexts such as face-to-face communication.”

Learn more at http://socialdeliberativeskills.com/