Accelerating Student Engagement with Asynchronous Online Debates

ABSTRACT

Rooted in the Greek tradition of Socrates and Aristotle, debate pedagogy utilizes the interpersonal 'heat' that comes with a clash in opinions to engage students in learning. Well-structured classroom debates can engage students, give them agency in their learning, and challenge them to view the layered perspectives that lie under the surface of topics across the curriculum. The proliferation of on-demand and asynchronous learning approaches presents a challenge for instructors who wish to hold live, synchronous, debates. It is frequently not possible to utilize traditional debate pedagogical techniques when students are not temporally or physically in a classroom space. Disruptions to traditional classroom learning caused by the COVID-19 epidemic only exacerbate the need to re-invent pedagogies for today's dynamic higher education learning environments. Emerging tools and approaches show promise in rekindling debate pedagogy, however, relatively little scholarship exists to orient instructors who wish to deploy evidenced-based debate pedagogy in blended and online courses. This paper presents the results of an investigation of one technology-facilitated approach to deploying asynchronous and online debates. Findings from the present investigation help to illuminate a path forward for instructors who wish to deploy structured classroom debates in online and asynchronous formats. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of College Teaching is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)