Design Pattern: ThreeHats

Summary	I tell a story, your write it down, and she'll present it.
Status	seed	Confidence	3
details...		Group	null

Problem

Stories (narratives) are a powerful form of capturing, structuring and sharing knowledge. Inexperiences story writers may find it hard to express their knowledge lucidly is this form. They -

• May feel insecure to simple tell a story, and will drift into preaching or promotional mode.
• Often take their setting for granted, and fail to provide a description which would allow readers to contextualise the story adequately.
• Might gloss over inconvenient details.
• Find it hard  to imagine their audience.

Many of these issues can be addressed by offering constructive peer feedback. However, peers may -

• Be reluctant to critisize
• Attribute misunderstanding to their own faults
• Skim the story rather than consider it attentively

Context

Co-located collaborative knowledge sharing activities. i.e.

• Learners are present in the same place and time
• Learning is driven by sharing learners' personal experiences / observations.

In addition, learning is supported by a shared web-based authoring tool. Although this pattern can generalised to relax this requierment, there is added value in this particular setting.

Solution

Instruct learners to work in groups of 3-5. In each group,

• One learner tells a story
• A second writes it using the collaborative authoring tool
• A third will later use this write-up for presenting the story to the larger group.

Preferably, the tool should include a template to provide soft scaffolding.

A story is complete when all participants feel that the presenter has enough in the write-up to be able to present the story accurately.

Once the group is satisfied with the outcome they change roles and repeat.

Related Patterns

list other patterns related to this one, under categories such as component, assisting, conflicting, uses this, etc.

Notes, Links and References

Liabilities, potential risks, extensions, expected side-effects

Licensing

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

note over Alice Alice tells a story of an event in which she was confronted with a challenge, and how she solved it. end note note over table Table could be a physical table around which participants hold the conversation, or could be a virtual synchronous multi-user medium end note note over Beatrice Beatrice records the story using the S.T.A.R.R template. end note note over "story editor" Ideally the story editor is an on-line multi-author multi-media structured narrative environment. In the absence of such, paper and pen go a long way. end note note over Carol Carol interrogates Alice for the story details until she is convinced she can present the story to a wider audience. end note Alice -> table: Tells story Beatrice -> story editor: records story using S.T.A.R.R template Beatrice -> Alice: prompts Alice to fill in all elements required by the template Alice -> table: responds to Beatrice's questions and provides missing details Carol -> Alice: asks for clarifications Alice -> table: responds to Carol's questions and provides missing details Beatrice -> story editor: updates as conversation evolves Beatrice -> Carol: Prompt Carol for her interpretation, by asking questions such as - n What is the story about?nWhat is is an example of?nWhat was successful, what was not so successful?nWhat was the critical element of design behind success?nWhat was the critical contextual factor?nWhen would it fail? Carol -> table: presents her understanding of the story Alice -> table: responds to Carol's interpretation Beatrice -> story editor: updates accordingly Alice -> story editor: reviews the text Carol -> story editor: reviews the text Alice -> table: proposes amendments to the text Carol -> table: proposes amendments to the text Beatrice -> table: proposes synthesis Beatrice -> story editor: updates to reflect consensus Carol -> Alice: identifies parts of the story which could be clarified by imagery Alice -> story editor: provides imagery if available (diagrams, photographs, etc.) Beatrice -> table: proposed sketches to address imagery needs Alice -> table: responds to Beatrice's proposals Beatrice -> story editor: incorporates selected imagery