{"id":242,"date":"2018-02-05T13:22:11","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T13:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/casestudies\/?p=242"},"modified":"2025-07-11T15:12:20","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T14:12:20","slug":"formal-debate-as-a-teaching-tool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/casestudies\/2018\/02\/05\/formal-debate-as-a-teaching-tool\/","title":{"rendered":"Formal debate as a teaching tool"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4><span style=\"color: #003f80;\"><strong>Dr Susan Thorpe, Senior Lecturer<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n<h4><span style=\"color: #003f80;\"><strong>School of Psychology\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n<h4><span style=\"color: #e96556;\"><strong>Medical Sciences<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n<hr \/>\n<h4><strong>What did you do?<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>Held a formal debate in which 2 teams of students have to research evidence for and against a given topic and construct arguments which they present at a formal public forum.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h4><strong>Who is involved?<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>Dr Sue Thorpe, Psychology MSc students<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h4><strong>How do you do it?<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>Teams consist of 6-8 members.\u00a0 Three people present the arguments, one person is the discussant.<\/p>\n<p>Order of speakers and time allowed is strictly controlled (see below)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Order of Speakers<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Timings<br \/>\nSpeaker 1: group 1: 3 mins<br \/>\nSpeaker 1: group 2: 3 mins<br \/>\nSpeaker 2: group 1: 2 mins<br \/>\nSpeaker 2: group 2: 2 mins<br \/>\nSpeaker 3: group 1: 1 min<br \/>\nSpeaker 3: group 2: 1 min<br \/>\nQuestions from the floor 5 mins<br \/>\nDiscussant group 1: 2 mins<br \/>\nDiscussant group 2:2 mins<\/p>\n<p>-The discussant summarises the points presented by their team and responds to any points raised by the opposition<\/p>\n<p>-The team members who are not speaking do the research as directed by the whole team<\/p>\n<p>-Non speaking team members present this to the speakers to use in their arguments<\/p>\n<p>-All team members decide on how to divide up the tasks<\/p>\n<p>-No audio visual aids allowed \u2013 the arguments will be judged entirely on their force and persuasiveness<\/p>\n<p>-Members of the teams not taking part in that particular debate give peer feedback and are in turn given feedback when it is their turn to debates<\/p>\n<p>-The audience votes for most convincing argument<\/p>\n<p>-Times are strictly enforced: students take it in turns to have custody of the timer and the bell. This is a much sought after position!<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h4><strong>Why do you do it?<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>-Combats possible passivity and inattention by engaging students in a novel learning exercise.<\/p>\n<p>-Raises confidence and cultural awareness<\/p>\n<p>-Opens up learning<\/p>\n<p>-Engages students in teamwork<\/p>\n<p>-Aids critical thinking<\/p>\n<p>-Allows students to explore difficult positions in a safe context<\/p>\n<p>-Encourages in-depth study of a particular topic<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h4><strong>Do<\/strong><strong>es it work?<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>The student feedback shown above is really positive and shows a number of the skills students develop by taking part.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h4><strong>Contact Details<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/psychology\/staff\/profile\/susanthorpe.html#background\">Dr Sue Thorpe, Senior Lecturer<\/a><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr Sue Thorpe gives an overview of how debates are used to develop a number of skills including critical thinking, teamwork and in-depth study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3007,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,274,320],"tags":[611,610,612],"class_list":["post-242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-fms","category-psychology","tag-collaboration","tag-communication","tag-leading-and-influencing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/casestudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/casestudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/casestudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/casestudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3007"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/casestudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/casestudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3936,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/casestudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions\/3936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/casestudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/casestudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/casestudies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}