Helping students make sense of global politics through class debates

It is common for politics tutors to assign essays on specific topics, which contribute to the final course grade. The risk with such assignments is that students simply do some quick research and write up the paper a few days before the deadline. Even if they turn out a cogent paper, this way of working is unlikely to lead to a deep appreciation for the topic. This requires proper time for reflection and sharing and exchanging of thoughts about the topic with others.

So, our class on global political economy replaced the written assignment with a debating component, which aims to give students more responsibility and agency to direct their learning trajectory. This is broken up into the stages described below to scaffold student learning.

Students form groups of four to six and select about five potential debate topics. They are then randomly assigned to either the supporting or opposing side. Examples of topics include:

• The decline of US dollar hegemony will destabilise the global financial system
• Automation technology such as AI increases economic inequality
• Rich countries should bear 75 per cent or more of the financial responsibility for climate change
• Countries should sell the right to immigrate
• Chinese foreign aid has been more beneficial to its recipients compared with Western aid.

Individual and group position paper

Two weeks before the debate, each student must submit an individual position paper of about 1,200 to 1,500 words. The groups then have a week to integrate their individual position papers into a more critical and cogent group paper. Each group must submit a group position paper of about 1,000 to 1,500 words. These are all uploaded to a shared site, enabling students to view their opposing side’s best points and prepare for the debate.

Students’ position papers are assessed on four elements:

1. Scope: students need to start their argument by stating their position, followed by setting the agenda and scope of the debate that best benefits their case
2. Suppositions: students need to make the supposition upon which they base their case as explicit, clear and defensible as possible by drawing on existing theoretical perspectives and logic learned in class
3. Logical consistency: students need to ensure they construct their argument with logical consistency, building on their suppositions to reach reasonable conclusions
4. Evidence: students support all parts of their argument with evidence, which can be in the form of case illustrations, statistical data and expert evaluation.

Peer review and evaluation

The class is tasked with writing peer reviews, reading two opposing position papers and providing feedback on the topic as a whole. Students write peer evaluations that summarise the key points for the affirmative and negative sides and discuss two or three areas they think are central to the development of the argument. They are asked to consider the logical consistency, validity of suppositions and quality of evidence.

The debating groups then respond to peer feedback in a 400- to 800-word paper for each topic. How students split the work is down to their discretion. They have two days to make final adjustments to their debating plans based on class feedback.

In-class debates

On the day of the debate, each side is allotted a 10-minute presentation slot followed by a 10-minute cross-examination – each side is questioned for 10 minutes and has 10 minutes to question their opponents. Not all students are required to speak in the debate as they can allocate contributions such as research, preparing slides, synthesising materials or articulating ideas. At the end of each topic’s debate, the entire class is invited to vote to select the winning group and best debater. The element of competition incentivises students to prepare well.

Students are assessed based on four major aspects:

1. Relevance: students need to stay on topic, putting forward relevant ideas to defend their position
2. Content: the quality of the evidence presented to back up their arguments
3. Form, style and persuasiveness: they need to make sure they have a good control of cadence, voice and gestures
4. Cross-examination: this looks at how effectively they answer questions directed at them and whether they form their own questions that get to the heart of the debate.

Debriefing and feedback

On completion, the tutor should give students an opportunity to reflect, individually and collectively, on the debating process. The tutor should debrief by offering some general feedback for the class based on the grading rubrics in the same way they would for a conventional essay submission. This should include individual and detailed written feedback and will help students prepare for exams involving analysis of course topics.

Adrian Man-Ho Lam is a course tutor in the department of politics and public administration at the University of Hong Kong.

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