Teaching via Skype: WUDC Basics

Here it is. I probably shouldn’t post it, because I make a lot of mistakes, but I was distracted pretty heavily by the technology I was using. Not the best idea to use some new tech when you are trying to teach, but I wanted to give it a try. Also, I had the audience a bit wrong, so I had to adapt on the fly to address the things I thought they might like to know about. In the future I think that the comparisons to policy debate’s attempt to “mind the gap” might be something best left for the end. Or a paper. Yea, probably a paper (this is indeed how my inventional process works – talk about something, become unsatisfied, write down a lot of stuff about it, make it into an essay).

I used a small mixer and a professional microphone to record this on my end, on the other end I am not sure what they had but it looks like it was just a very nice Mac microphone built into the laptop. The sound quality is quite good and it makes me excited to try making some short podcasts about debate!

Things to consider:

1. Delay in reaction – there’s a bit of a delay from the crowd reaction to what I’m saying and it’s hard to attend to it.

2. Moving around things on the computer screen is distracting to my narrative flow – it’s pretty obvious – but I think that will work itself out over time and with some familiarity. More tests are needed.

3. Interactivity. So many simple-minded folks critique this sort of teaching by saying it’s not face to face so you lose something. What is lost? I think the Q&A is possibly the best part. I think unfamiliarity and a lack of experience with the technology is what prompts this criticism.

I fully expect that most Universities will demand 10% of their courses University wide be taught exclusively online over the next 5 years. I hope to get a bit more practice in before this happens.

Last week I shot some asynchronous teaching videos for our University’s “Storm Talk” series – which is where they ask professors to talk about things that interest them for a few minutes here and there and post them to social media sites for student reaction. This might have a bit better application for pedagogy than the “live lecture” – Lecturing might return to its popularly considered form of being ineffective, but this form might be super-effective online, where students can treat the lecture like a “text” – flipping back and forth through it to concentrate on the parts that they consider most difficult or most valuable.

Championship Debates from the Northeastern US

Here they are all together for your viewing pleasure, the elimination debates from the recent Northeastern Universities Debating Championships (NEUDC).

Semifinals

Finals

There is a quarterfinal video, but for whatever reason, it always has an error or some problem when I upload it. It will eventually appear on this post, so keep an eye out for it.

Championship Debates from the Northeastern US

Here they are all together for your viewing pleasure, the elimination debates from the recent Northeastern Universities Debating Championships (NEUDC).

Semifinals

Finals

There is a quarterfinal video, but for whatever reason, it always has an error or some problem when I upload it. It will eventually appear on this post, so keep an eye out for it.

Teaching Keeps You Honest

Image via

Wikipedia

This week I am teaching my Worlds debate class, and the group I have is pretty impressive. All quite sharp, all very interested, and all excited to learn the art of debate. I started as I usually do by showing the WUDC Koc Worlds Final round – a round that many still praise as one of the best, if not the best WUDC final of all time. After we watched about half of it, the students were ready to ask questions or make comments.

“Why do they bounce around so weird when they talk?”

“Why do they go so fast? I can’t remember anything they said.”

“Why don’t they just choose the most important point and stick with it?”

“Why do they speak so artificially?”

I was struck with a nice moment of dissonance – here’s the best we have to offer from the culture of competitive debate, and an intelligent, if green, audience is having trouble understanding why it is valuable. There number one concern was if they were going to have to speak like that.

“No,” I said, “But you will be expected to speak persuasively. So if you are in front of different audiences, you must be prepared to adapt your words to fit the occasion, otherwise it’s like you haven’t said anything at all.” They were pretty quiet. “Like how you feel about this video,” I added. They started to resonate.

I was reminded of the continuing insular practices of monastic orders. Their idea of good worship, or best worship is really just a performance of a believed rhetorical “purity” – when unordained see it, they correctly identify it as irrelevant, weird, and confusing. If you are in the order though, if you have faith, then you start to see it as not only proper, but “the best.”

Debate as seen from non-Western monastic practices is just

upaya

–

skillful means

that help one realize how to reach others with the truth. I think this is a good spice to add to our discussions of WUDC rounds that are “the best” or “really good.” We must always keep in mind that we are not reaching the audiences we imagine we are, and the more we speak to one another and appeal to one another, the less of a remainder there is. Without something left that doesn’t cleanly divide out in the discourse, there’s little for outsiders to grasp on to.

Having to teach debate to the non-initiated is also an important element of practice. It’s required in martial arts to teach at some point in your studies. We should require it too. At the very least, it will keep you honest about what you are accomplishing, doing, permitting, and promoting in the world. And although cold, it’s good to get hit with a bath from time to time.

Related articles

Teaching Keeps You Honest

Image via

Wikipedia

This week I am teaching my Worlds debate class, and the group I have is pretty impressive. All quite sharp, all very interested, and all excited to learn the art of debate. I started as I usually do by showing the WUDC Koc Worlds Final round – a round that many still praise as one of the best, if not the best WUDC final of all time. After we watched about half of it, the students were ready to ask questions or make comments.

“Why do they bounce around so weird when they talk?”

“Why do they go so fast? I can’t remember anything they said.”

“Why don’t they just choose the most important point and stick with it?”

“Why do they speak so artificially?”

I was struck with a nice moment of dissonance – here’s the best we have to offer from the culture of competitive debate, and an intelligent, if green, audience is having trouble understanding why it is valuable. There number one concern was if they were going to have to speak like that.

“No,” I said, “But you will be expected to speak persuasively. So if you are in front of different audiences, you must be prepared to adapt your words to fit the occasion, otherwise it’s like you haven’t said anything at all.” They were pretty quiet. “Like how you feel about this video,” I added. They started to resonate.

I was reminded of the continuing insular practices of monastic orders. Their idea of good worship, or best worship is really just a performance of a believed rhetorical “purity” – when unordained see it, they correctly identify it as irrelevant, weird, and confusing. If you are in the order though, if you have faith, then you start to see it as not only proper, but “the best.”

Debate as seen from non-Western monastic practices is just

upaya

–

skillful means

that help one realize how to reach others with the truth. I think this is a good spice to add to our discussions of WUDC rounds that are “the best” or “really good.” We must always keep in mind that we are not reaching the audiences we imagine we are, and the more we speak to one another and appeal to one another, the less of a remainder there is. Without something left that doesn’t cleanly divide out in the discourse, there’s little for outsiders to grasp on to.

Having to teach debate to the non-initiated is also an important element of practice. It’s required in martial arts to teach at some point in your studies. We should require it too. At the very least, it will keep you honest about what you are accomplishing, doing, permitting, and promoting in the world. And although cold, it’s good to get hit with a bath from time to time.

Related articles