RCL #3 Deliberation Reflection.

Deliberation Nation has come and gone and with it many lessons where learned and a whole new experience was lived. Overall I was satisfied with the effectiveness and atmosphere of both the deliberation I attended and the one I led. With that being said I was also able to find errors and improvements that I could apply to future discussions with a deliberation setting.

The first thing that was refreshing to see was the fact that the deliberation style really does encourage healthy participation amongst the participants. In almost every debate I have attended previously it has been easy for tension to build up and for the discussion to go off on a tangent; however, I think this structure allows for a clearer and simpler form of dialogue. With this being said, I also noticed in both deliberations that it was easy for the discussion to be dominated by two or three people with a limited point of view, and while this may have to do with the size of the groups (and possibly the fact that some felt forced to attend) I believe that moderators and approach leaders should look for ways to draw out participation by different people in order to enhance the experience.

While guiding my approach I found it was difficult to effectively stimulate discussion without expressing an opinion or creating a biased front. The participants seemed to participate the most when they were asked about their opinion on the interpretation of a statistic or on their opinion on a given event. The discussion would stray when we would focus too much on personal experience, and this was tricky. Many participants used personal stories to exemplify a point, however, there were also many occasions where this lead to a tangent in the discussion. In the future If discussion would be held more focused if we relate personal experiences more to the discussion rather than continue the discussion based on the experience.

Something that caught my attention was that the deliberation I attended broke down the audience into two groups and explored the approaches with the groups separately. While this was effective because it encouraged participation, it made it seem like two different discussions were going on and it was hard to connect points between the groups despite them generating similar ideas. With that being if we can find a way to bridge the communication between the two sections in a more effective manner I think that it could have work well.

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