Sociology course: debate on racial profiling

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Overall, I thought a debate was an effective way for the students to reflect and apply the learning from the required background reading. By splitting the class into the two sides, it motivates students to think through alternative viewpoints that they may not have thought about before. The technique also required full participation and a collaborative approach for each team to deliver their arguments.

I think this learning activity could have been more learner centred by getting the students to prepare the summaries vs. the instructor. The opposite sides could have written up the alternative arguments and then the whole class could have brainstormed about missing arguments for both sides.

The debate seems like a good way to create a scenario where students are learning from each other, and in which the information to be gleaned from the assigned readings is not presented directly to the students. Instead, they need to think it through and apply the central questions to the reading.

One thing that could be changed about the debate assignment, is presenting the idea of debates as a valuable approach before the assignment itself. That way, explicit skill instruction is built into the assignment, and students go into it already having a sense of what the value of this activity is. This would also make the reflection afterwards more valuable.

Using the format of a debate is clearly a nice fit with the topic which could be controversial. I wonder if there could be a way to instruct debating skills in a more purposeful or sophisticated way, beyond the exercise of taking each other's point of view. In other words, it seems this format could be very useful to deepen students understanding of the content the debate was about but maybe something could be added in terms of communication skills?

I think debates are an effective way to encourage collaboration among students. The students in this case study were involved in hard, messy way of learning by brainstorming their own ideas about racial profiling and taking different positions for the arguments. The students did have an opportunity to reflect on their learning by looking into the summaries prepared by the instructor whose role was more like a facilitator.

Debates are a great way to get to the core of how to develop and support a position. Students often already have a sense of what is expected as the form/style is common in popular media and elsewhere. In my experience using debates, there are some barriers to learning that tend to arise though, such as language issues, public performance anxiety, and quick pace. With these challenges, students who know the material well may not be able to fully demonstrate their knowledge and skills.