In my last post, I gave the higher elevation view of how to put a debate together for an online course. Here’s my specific rendition of it for my debate course.

The course is about the significance of large debate events for the public -whether they matter or not. Each unit has a debate with it, so I tried to write a generic debate assignment that would work for all the different debates we are going to analyze.

Asynchronous debates are necessary due to the restrictions of internet quality, computer and webcam strength, and general time restrictions – many of my students have headed home and could be in a number of different time zones. But beyond the immediate need due to COVID 19, there is some value here as it discounts the importance of the “quick response” or the “zinger” in debating and refocuses debate on the well-prepared response. Perhaps our excitement about the quick, snappy response isn’t as important as we think it is in debate?

Comments welcome!