Debate Across the Curriculum
Executive Director, Christopher Medina designed, implemented and studied the first Debate Across the Curriculum program in higher education. The focus, enhancing students’ critical thinking skills through the medium of debate: an instructional strategy that will strengthen communication skills, as well as potential ancillary benefits like reading and writing skills. Students learn the principles of argumentation and prepare appropriately by researching and practicing in anticipation of debating, they can improve their cognitive performance as well as oral delivery. As a result, students sharpen their information literacy skills and develop confidence.
Debate Across the Curriculum Overview
In recent years, pedagogy has been undergoing a momentous shift to learner-centered instruction. James (2006) has documented the growing importance of learner-centered instruction. Among its benefits, learner-centered instruction promotes higher-order thinking skills such as evaluation, examination, and implementation rather than lower-order skills (Vo & Morris, 2006). Higher education in the U.S. often puts substantial emphasis on “what to think rather than how to think” (Daud & Husin, 2004, p. 478). Zare and Othman (2013) argue that critical thinking skills are recognized as vital skills for the growing workforce within the 21st century. Debate has the power to provide students with the highly desirable skills and abilities sought by employers and necessary for leadership positions.
Debate education has many well-documented benefits. These benefits include: higher academic achievement (Catterall, 2002), higher grades (Luong, 2000), familiarity with new ideas and language (Carr, 2002), civic engagement (Rutten & Soetaet, 2013), critical thinking (Nance & Foeman, 1993), builds career readiness and leadership aptitude (Stepp, 1997), critical listening, purposeful inquiry, problem-solving, reading, and writing (Dillard-Knox, 2016), and Peterson (2014) notes, “Debate fosters skills to “effectively navigate civil society, evaluate argumentation, and arrive at solutions to social problems” (p. 22).
Dr. Christopher Medina designed, implemented, and studied a comprehensive debate across the curriculum program that taught every student attending the subject institution the fundamental of argumentation, in their first-year experience classes and reinforced those skills with debate or discussion in classes in every classification of every major. Cohort one's critical thinking gains were 105% greater than the national average and 96% higher than the African Americans and Black national average, respectively. Thus, debate across the curriculum has a significant effect on critical thinking gains at a rate of almost twice than the comparison groups.
Additionally, satisfaction surveys were given to students after a debate or discussion assignment. These surveys were given to understand the effectiveness of the classroom debates and their feelings about the effectiveness of the resulting learning and overall program satisfaction. The results demonstrated that approximately 82% of students reported that they learned more about the material because of debate and approximately the same number were satisfied or very satisfied with the program overall. These results demonstrate that students positively respond to in-class debates and are engaged, increasing learning.
The enhancement of argumentation and presentation skills is paramount to students’ ability to compete in the world beyond the walls of their respective institutions. Educational institutions have a responsibility to the individual, and society at large, to establish a curriculum that increases critical thinking, which serves the interests of all societal stakeholders.
Dr. Christopher Medina has spent the past decade designing, implementing, and studying the results of the first debate across the curriculum program in higher education. The National HBCU Speech and Debate Association, under the direction of Dr. Christopher Medina, is developing a program that can be implemented at K-12 schools, colleges, and universities. All proceeds from these consulting, professional development services will be used for the administration and benefit the programs of The National HBCU Speech and Debate Association.
Download the Debate Across the Curriculum Overview Whitepaper
