Behind the Scenes at Baruch Regionals


A photo from inside the NYU apartment, very nice!

The first night of the tournament I had one of the best times I’ve had in a while. Before round 5, I became part of a secret plan – my co-conspirator and I would leave the tournament after the round announcement, make a quick trip to a liquor store, and then enjoy dinner in one of the NYU guest apartments available only to certain VIPs like my co-conspirator.

The apartment was amazing. Kitchen, living room, entryway, dining room (!) and wonderful furniture and decor everywhere. I should have snapped a few more pictures, but we had a lot to talk about. Get two debate coaches together who have similar interests and there’s little time for anything else.

It was a great time and I highly recommend visiting the NYU apartments if you get a chance. I had no idea they were even there.

New Debate Format?

Got this email off of the British Debate listserv. They are establishing an interesting new format that focuses on audience participation called Policy Slam.

This is from Debate Mate, a UK debate education organization.

The Format:

    1.  Fishbowl

This involves two concentric circles of chairs – the inner circle with
6-8 chairs and the outer with approximately 10. To start with, the inner
circle has a facilitator, some participants who support particular
positions on the topic in question and some vacant seats.  Everyone else
sits as an audience in the outer circle.  The facilitator introduces the
topic and a discussion begins.  After a while, anyone from the audience
can come up, take one of the spare seats and join in the discussion.  As
more of the outer circle move in those who have been the longest in the
inner circle are asked to move out.  The format combines the coherence
of small group discussion with wider inclusiveness.

    2. Consensus voting

This involves a discussion followed by all participants ranking the
various positions in preference order.  The higher the preference, the
greater the number of points ie.  if there are 6 participants the voter
gives his 1st preference 6 points, 2nd preference gets 5 points, and so
on. The winner is the option with the most points and the higher the
number of points the winner gets, the greater the degree of consensus. 
The aim of this type of debating is that even if you strongly disagree
with someone else’s views, you have an incentive to have a proper
dialogue with them so that they rate your opinion higher in the list of
preferences.

An event would involve two consensus votes, one part-way through a
debate and the other at the end. You win if your proposal either comes
top in the final vote, or improves the most between the two votes.

Maybe this could be a format worth trying in undergraduate courses on debate and argumentation?

Microlecturing?

Microlecturing sounds like the worst idea ever.

However, as a part of a larger online course, it could be a better idea than a glossary.

Seems a bit more interactive in the sense that it’s an explanation and not a definition. An explanation would broaden the meaning, a definition would nail it down, so to speak.

I don’t think lecturing is transmission. I think it’s exploration if done well. I don’t think there’s anything good to come out of the idea that lecturing is full of “excess verbiage” – transmission theory is bad, but you don’t know bad until you link transmission theory to pedagogy.

The problem isn’t the length, the problem is that access to lectures are tied to going to a particular physical place at a set time every couple of days. Podcasting, Netcasting, Virtual Worlds all mitigate that concern. Focus should be on those technologies in order to bring the lecture – still one of the most effective teaching strategies – into the 21st century.

For a good defense of lecturing, I suggest Woodrow Wilson’s essay on Adam Smith.  Too bad it’s not on the web yet. I suggest the alternate technlology of books but beware the excess verbiage.