The document provides 10 tips for using the Socratic method online. The tips include clarifying conversational guidelines, asking questions and waiting for responses, encouraging uncertainty and self-analysis, using follow up questions to engage in discussion, fostering openness by admitting what is not known, welcoming new ideas, keeping explanations and questions simple, discouraging reliance on authority, avoiding rigid structures, and making concepts accessible by breaking them into smaller pieces. The overall goal is to "interactivate" or bring the Socratic method into an online environment through these techniques.

1. CONSTRUCTIVISM MEETS CLASSICISM:
TEN TIPS TO INTERACTIVATE THE
SOCRATIC METHOD
Kkk
Katherine Watson, Coastline Distance Learning
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2. Inquiring minds want to know…
• What is the Socratic method?
• Who has used the Socratic method?
• Why and how is the Socratic method effective?
• Why and how can/should the Socratic method be
used online?
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3. How to interactivate the Socratic method?
• Tip 1: Clarify conversational guidelines
– Netiquette
– Consistency of appellations
– Development of conversational pragmatics
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4. To interactivate the Socratic method…
• Tip 2: Ask questions, and wait quietly for
answers
– Online, cite the name of the person to whom the
question is directed
– Remind people of parallel conversational topics
– Foster an atmosphere of patience
– Foster introspection in search of self-knowledge
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5. To interactivate the Socratic method…
…
• Tip 3: Engender “productive discomfort”
– Provoke self-analysis
– Encourage uncertainty
– Pursue the “how” &
“why” always……
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6. How to interactivate Socrates…
• Tip 4: Use follow-up questions
– Encourage healthy discussion
– Encourage “multi-logue”
– Engage and link
– Ask: How so?
– Ask: Why?
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7. Interactivating Socrates? How?
• Tip 5: Foster openness; reveal that you don’t
know something
– Foster humanity
– Probe, but encourage
– Correct by example
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8. Interactivation tip #6
• Tip 6: Welcome new, “crazy”, alternative views
– Remember: there are no “stupid questions”
– Be not shocked by the new
– Encourage excitement
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9. Interactivation made easy
• Tip 7: KISS
– In explanations
– In questions
– In elements of argument
– In the number of things
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10. Interactivation Socratically
• Tip 8: Discourage deference to authority
– Watch for the argumentum ad verecundiam
– Keep it logical and germane
– Trust personal judgment
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11. Interactivation tips…
• Tip 9: Avoid “hard architecture”
– Retain the notion of flux
– Accept disagreements
– Encourage change
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12. Interactivation tips …
• Tip 10: Shrink to fit
– Big ideas can always be re-packaged into smaller
concepts or modules
– Nothing is too big for the human mind or for
cyberspace to handle
– All conversations begin one on one
– We prefer the magical number 7
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13. Socratic inquirers want to….
• Clarify conversational guidelines
• Ask questions, and wait…
• Engender productive discomfort
• Use follow-up questions
• Foster openness
• Welcome the new
• KISS
• Discourage deference to authority
• Avoid hard architecture
• Shrink to fit
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14. Socrates can be interactivated
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