Running Your Discussion

Clarimap is flexible to allow you to run your group however you want.  To get the most out of Clarimap, we recommend two things: (1) Use of groups to segment your users and get maximum insight from reports and (2) Running the discussion in phases alternating between argument building and argument rating.

Putting your participants in groups lets you see how different groups evaluated the statements.  You can request Clarimap reports by group and learn how groups of participants respond to statements and arguments.

Possible groupings include job division, seniority with organization, and geographic location.  Whatever you think is useful.  The great thing is that you can even add groups after your participants have built out the discussion and rated all the statements.  You don’t have to establish the groups up front.  Decide on a new segmentation method when you are analyzing the reports and you can slice the data the way you want it without making your users go back through the discussion.

We recommend group discussions occur in at least two phases: a Discussion Phase and a Rating Phase. In the Discussion Phase, participants add position statements to respond to other position statements and to provide information. In the Rating Phase, no further position statements are added, but existing position statements are rated. Participants are encouraged to write reasons for their ratings.

The reason for this is that in the Discussion Phase participants are encouraged to make good arguments and not evaluate numerically.  If they think an argument is weak, they should offer one or more counter (opposing) arguments.  If they agree with a statement but do not believe it is expansive enough, they should offer supporting arguments (rather than just giving the initial statement a high rating.)  As an administrator, you can disable the rating for a discussions during this phase

In the Rating Phase, you can re-enable ratings and tell your participants to cast a critical eye on all statements.  By limiting the ratings to a certain period of time, you encourage participants to get on with the business of rating all statements.  When the Rating Phase is over, you can either use the reports from the data you have or rearrange the discussion and open it up for another Discussion Phase.

Some managers may wish to remove weak arguments (those that have been rated low) or to combine arguments that are very similar at this point.  As an administrator you have this capability.  How you run things to get the most from your discussion is up to you and it is hard to give specific advice as so much depends on the personalities of the participants.