MAOL Dialogue Guidelines

Last Revised: 12/08/2014

The School of Business & Leadership uses online dialogue to facilitate learning and deepening of understanding and application. The purpose of dialogue is to help students understand the relevance of concepts. Masters students should test their understandings of every concept with their peers and professors to prepare for practical applications. You can read the material, but how much you have mastered the concepts and their relevance is the extent to which you can discuss and apply them. In addition, learning how to write in a thorough yet concise manner is a skill worth developing. This means each posted message must be professional. Professors will comment in the dialogue to help guide individuals and groups toward this desired result.

Dialogue Requirements

Frequency: 3 posts per period

Each period (a period is 2 weeks) a dialogue is assigned students must post 3 times. At least one of these posts should be an original thread. The remaining 2 posts can be responses to other students or your professor. Add threads and respond to others by adding to the base of what is known, not by reiterating what someone else wrote.

Regularity: Evenly Distributed Posts

Posts must occur evenly distributed throughout the open forum period. This means students should aim at posting at least once the first week and complete the remaining 2 posts during the second week. Dialogue substitutes for in-class verbal contributions. Those who participate during the whole time will receive higher grades than those who exit soon after the discussion begins or those who enter at the end of the "class time" to add a few comments on the last day only. In addition, no messages posted after the closing date will be considered in the grade for any reason. Each group is free to continue using a forum if they wish without a grading consequence. Since this represents in-class discussion, it is important to enter the dialogue early and engage with each other and the professors on an in-going basis. Fully support your statements. Remember that professionals are interested in supported conclusions, not personal opinions. Also, it is important to build on what others post. Thus, part of the evaluation will be a measure of how well you tie your contribution to that of other students.

Length: 200 - 300 words

Each post should be between 200 - 300 words (not including references). Develop skills at posting complete thoughts succinctly. The word limits are purposeful. Speakers receive limited amounts of time to address their audiences, and editors expect writers will adhere to author's guidelines.

Writing Style & Quality: APA, Critical Thinking & Supported

The Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership (MAOL) program follows the APA writing style. As such, dialogues also use APA style. All sources cited in a dialogue message apart from other participants must be listed in references at the end of the message. All references listed at the end of a message must be cited in the message. Credit your peers by name in the body of messages without formal citations. Dialogue is a conversation between people who are learning together. Make sure you respond to all or part of the posed topic by citing concepts covered in the assigned course readings and related materials. Ask specific questions. Support a position based on the course concepts.

Demonstrate critical thinking and separate personal opinions from reasoned conclusions . At the graduate level, students are expected to contribute to dialogues in a critical and scholarly manner. This means that your posts (original thread or responses) need to be well supported by research and literature. Each post must include at least one authoritative quotation (with appropriate citation/reference). Simple statements of personal opinions and ‘one-liners', such as “I agree with you”, “This is cool”, “Nice work” are NOT acceptable and do not reflect scholarly work. While such words of encouragement may be offered in response to a peer's post, don't end there! Go deeper and provide your supported arguments.

Comment with informative posts - questions, expansions, and exchanges - over assumptions and conclusions. Not all concepts are as useful or easy to understand and applied as others, and not everyone will see things as you do. Thus, everyone can benefit from your contributions . It is important to interrogate and probe the contributions of other participants. Seek clarification, and when appropriate challenge the point of another student without being confrontational. In addition to learning about the forum topics, note how others respond to the messages. Observe the extent to which posted thoughts succeed or fail to increase understanding. Examine your own posted messages to determine how to compose increasingly clear and succinct messages. Your writing and presentation should improve as your appreciation increases of how others perceive your contributions.

Simple Logistics: Save

Many students draft their messages in a word processor to use composition tools like online dictionaries, thesauri, spell check, and a grammar checker. Then they save a personal copy for short-term reference. Finally, they paste their work into Canvas. When people log into Canvas the system keeps track of how much time elapses since their last page was displayed as a means to identify inactive users. Composing a message to post in Canvas does not require changing pages, and therefore does not update Canvas's timing data. So, if someone composes in Canvas beyond the allotted time limit, the system will automatically log them off without notice - and their composition could be lost. It is a good thing that the Canvas server logs off inactive users so that others can have improved access. It is not good to lose your work unwittingly. Saving personal work regularly is a responsible self-leadership habit to maintain.

Dialogue Examples

Christian values held by top leaders often do not penetrate lower organization levels because, as Finkelstein & Hambrick (1996) point out, top leaders in larger companies spend most of their time interacting with a small group of people at the same level as themselves.

I'm unclear why Davis-Blake and Pfeffer (1989) stress the interaction of personality and situation. Myers and Briggs (1998) indicate that the individual's type alone can predict behavior.

If Selznick's (1996) Institutional Theory is correct then it will be difficult for organizations founded on biblical values to succeed. However, Hatch (1997, p. 48) implies that the view of institutionalized vs. non-institutionalized organizations might be in their rationalization. It seems that "as we think so shall we be." This would place more emphasis on the leader and the constant presentation of the vision.