On collaborative technologies supporting cognitive skills for mutual regard

In this paper I will elaborate on a promising link between ethics, thinking skills, and online collaborative tools. Cognitive tools used for communication and collaboration can support and scaffold ethically-relevant skills such as: cognitive empathy, the ability to take multiple perspectives, the ability to reflect on one's biases and emotional state, a tolerance for uncertainty, ambiguity, and change, and the ability to reflect upon the quality of a communication that one is involved in. These thinking skills contribute to the quality of knowledge building and decision making. Though many projects overlap with these concerns, there is no coherent field of inquiry, no attempt to do rigorous empirical research, share best-practices and lessons learned, or identify the key orienting research questions for the "collaborative technologies supporting cognitive skills for ethics" theme. I argue that an opportunity now exists to source this large body of related work to create a coherent R&D focus.