I can assure you that you are not just describing a Nebraskan phenomenon:
>It might help to negotiate a group understanding of integrity in
>reader responses.
>How might one challenge an idea without being
>disagreable or insulting? Is it possible to disagree without being
>disagreable? How might one read a challenge without being defensive or
>taking insult? (Maybe this sort of trust-building activity is just a
>Nebraska cultural phenomena, but it seems to work.)
-- this kind of negotiation is, on the contrary, crucial to any
meeting-ground, virtual or real, where people are learning in
collaboration. I find it particularly interesting how this can be done in
telematic collaborations. The experiences from XMCA serve me as a kind of
role model for this: here is a place where it works, as an
already-established AND as a recurrently re-negotiated practice. Building
it up in other places takes a lot more persistence. Or when it comes to
courses it takes, I suppose, some really good pre-organisation. Learning to
tell ourselves and others apart from our/ /their ideas is not an easy
thing...
Eva