Material Detail

At the beginning of the semester, the class is divided into teams, each consisting of 2 students. Two teams are selected to participate in each of the scheduled classroom debates covering relevant policy questions. Each debate is held at the point in the semester when related course material is covered. For each debate, one of the 2 students in each team will be responsible for researching the affirmative position of the policy question and the other team member will be responsible for researching the negative position. Several days prior to the debate, each team member will submit a paper supporting his/her assigned position. Team members then meet outside of class to share and discuss both sides of the question and both team members must arrive to class prepared to actively debate either position on the day of the debate. A coin flip determines which of the two teams will debate the affirmative position; the other team is responsible for debating the negative position.

• This assignment was originally developed for an Economics of Poverty and Discrimination course targeting non-majors, but the assignment could be readily adapted to other courses by altering the debate topics and/or number of debates.

This will delete the comment from the database. This operation is not reversible. Are you sure you want to do it?

Thank you for reporting a broken "Go to Material" link in MERLOT to help us maintain a collection of valuable learning materials.

If you feel this material is inappropriate for the MERLOT Collection, please click SEND REPORT, and the MERLOT Team will investigate. Thank you!

You are being taken to the material on another site. This will open a new window.

Do not show me this again