Firstly, Socratic dialogue is a purposeful conversation consisting of “asking essential questions and testing tentative answers against reason and fact in a continual and virtuous circle of honest debate” (Cookson, 2009, p. 8). As recently discussed by Cope (2019) Socratic dialogue has long been embedded in traditional higher education. Indeed, the famous ‘Harvard Case Method’ in which Harvard Business School professors engage with their MBA students utilises a form of Socrative dialogue, although in a structured formulaic way. In the MBA case class, the professor poses a series of broad questions to the class about a problem or issue faced by a business, and various class member respond and build on each other’s thoughts and ideas in a typical 90-minute session (Bridgman, Cummings & McLaughlin, 2016).

Likewise, Cope (2019) contends that the new digital media provides the architecture for building rich dialogue in pedagogy, but it does take effort to build purposeful digital conversations for 21st century students. Indeed, Socrates himself preferred face-to-face dialogue (rather than written expression); asserting that writing “roams about everywhere" (Socrates, as cited in Furedi, 2016, p. 524). Today’s millennials have also been ‘trained’ by exposure to the general digital media platforms, that seem far removed from the inquiry and dialogue that Socrates would have recognised (e.g., the general standard of discourse on social media platforms such as Twitter generally consist of opinion and counter opinion).

However, there are good examples of the convergence of Socratic inquiry with the new digital media such as “SocraticNet”, an online social network system originating from Drexel University in Pennsylvania (McEachron, Bach, and Sualp, 2012). This interactive learning environment has teachers, students and other stakeholders (e.g., librarians), explicitly participating in online Socrative dialogue by asking questions, judging and evaluating information, and using the feedback to build knowledge and complete their learning tasks. The complex interactions (e.g., student-to-student, teacher-to-teacher, student-to-teacher) utilising the Socratic method and enabled in the digital space, lead to richer conversations and a true online learning community (McEachron, Bach, and Sualp).

Aiding students to build the critical thinking skillsets and discipline required for meaningful dialogue and problem solving, underlines the importance of today’s educators needing to keep up with both old and new pedagogical ideas and methods. A further good example is the current Coursera course I am undertaking - enabling educators to initiate and facilitate the meaningful rich conversations that even Socrates himself would have recognised; albeit in the new digital learning sphere!

Bridgman, T., Cummings, S., & McLaughlin, C. (2016). Restating the case: How revisiting the development of the case method can help us think differently about the future of the business school. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 15, 724-741. http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amle.2015.0291

Cookson, P. W., Jr. (2009). What Would Socrates say? Educational Leadership 67, 8–14.

Cope, B. (2019) Recursive Feedback Part 4D Socrative dialogue finds a home in the 21st century, Retrieved from https://www.coursera.org/learn/elearning/lecture/NpBkq/recursive-feedback-part-4d-socratic-dialogue-finds-a-home-in-the-21st-century

Furedi, F. (2016). Moral panic and reading: Early elite anxieties about the media effect.” Cultural Sociology 10, 523–537. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975515626953