Pikes Peak Community College Joins Second Life Debating


Recently I have been using the language of building “machines” that “do things” as a metaphor for most everything happening intellectually around me. After the Denver Nationals hosted by Regis and The University of Denver I referred to the growing BP national circuit in the US as a machine that we are excited and thrilled to build, yet we are not quite sure of all the functions. What features are being built in that we can’t or won’t notice?

Second Life debating is similar to me. After the great debate on the 20th, last night I was invited to offer some comments on a debate held by Pikes Peak Community College Students on their virtual campus. I think it was an excellent demonstration of the potential of Second Life and debate, as none of us in the room had met before, and we were thousands of miles apart. Even so, the debate went on fine, and I could comfortably listen and take notes from my (soon to be under renovations) office.
The topic was “Women professors make better teachers than male professors.” Pretty interesting potential there. The format was a modified L-D format with shortened speeches and some built in prep time for questions. A pretty good beginner format I must say. I thought it worked well to create a debate that was not intimidating or overwhelming for brand new debaters.
I find myself less interested, or perhaps less distracted by the technical elements of Second Life debating the more I do it. I attended a lot more to the debate itself, which became much more a debate about whether women and men have measurable or distinct differences rather than about whether one is a better sort of teacher than the other. I think that the elements were there to have that debate, but everyone became bogged down in information. This is why I always paradoxically say the less information the better the debate.
Also I think that LD and other such formats attempt to run away from debate about larger ideas, ideology, goals and principles. The debate tends to condense around smaller matters of statistical validity, source verification, and the collision of facts. A larger frame really helps make the information presented “do something” to or for the minds of the audience.
But the statistics and fact-based approach has benefits in a format that is disembodied. No clear way outside of vocal variety to indicate passion or conviction. The bodies are not vibrant. There is a connection lost to the aesthetic dimension of debating.
This debate helped me think about a hybrid Second Life format that captures the conviction and big-picture sensibility of BP/public debating along with the hard evidence nature of LD and Policy debating. Both are not well suited as they are for Second Life and need some adjustment for the virtual world. I hope to think about this more as I have an upcoming project – I’ve been invited to work on how to transition a High School CX debate format into Second Life. The biggest challenge there is the demand for shared documents during the debate. How can you normalize this in the Second Life environment?
The first of many questions, I’m sure.

The Second Second Life Debate in Review


Not the biggest crowd, but who cares? The debate was fantastic, and as soon as I figure out how to edit the video I will post it.
I really think this debate pushes the idea of virtual debating to the next level for a few reasons.
First, the debate occurred without much call or attending to the strange format. Several speakers did start their speech with “Can everyone hear me?” which wouldn’t happen in a normal competitive debate because of the presence of body language/feedback from embodied interlocutors makes it unnecessary. Second Life avatars have the same blank, blinking stare of a reanimated corpse no matter if someone is at the keyboard or not. It’s an uneasy environment in which to engage in something so embodied, so engaged, and so immediate. There’s a disconnect that debaters must overcome to feel comfortable arguing in this environment.
Again, just like the last Second Life debate, I really enjoyed the banter in the chat window occurring parallel to the actual verbal debate. I think it’s fascinating how the audience and other members have a commentary on the live debate going on in a form that doesn’t interrupt and doesn’t mess with the debate as its happening. It’s sort of like the commentary you would have in your head during a debate (when you split yourself into two people) or that old fashioned good time of passing the paper back and forth in the final round giving your thoughts on the debate that, of course, you should have been in.
Pedagogically it allows a teacher to do “simultaneous translation” of a debate in progress for new students. I think this is the most exciting and coolest idea related to the parallel chat feature. This will make Second Life workshops have an advantage, or at least something unique, over real life workshops. For a while I have thought of Second Life debate training as a stop-gap or a place holder, something you do because you can’t do the “better” thing.
Finally the technology of Second Life is just better. The new updates since last February really made the avatars smoother and more interesting. The sound was better and the lag was non-existent. I am really interested in doing some debate training in Second Life now due to this realization.
I also think there’s something here for those who suffer from communication apprehension. They are not their real selves, so self-disclosure and risk plummet when they have to give a presentation or do a debate in Second Life.
I think the next Second Life debate will push things forward by making these events more regular and expected in the SL community as well as the debate community. With the right publicity (like we had last time) I think we will be able to normalize virtual debate for many people. But what me must be careful of is not advocating this as a replacement for debating tournaments. We must be very clear that this augments the debate experience, and makes it accessible for those that cannot or do not want to travel to tournaments.