DEBATES - A TOOL FOR EFFECTIVE ENGAGEMENT OF STUDENTS

The authors have been continuously fascinated by the role of debates in effective engagement of students.Debates have been well recognized as a valuable tool for the assessment of educational objectives.In the Fall 06 semester, debates were used as a tool for learning the subject in an environmental science course, C010-Environmental Science.Students were asked to make handwritten notes while the debates were on progress.There were six debates in the course.The final examination contained conceptual questions, including the contents of the debates.Except for the handwritten notes, no other sources including text books, electronic versions, or xerox copies were allowed to be used by the students during the final examination.In a survey conducted by the authors, students reported that the debates gave them several chances to study the subject in addition to paying careful attention to the lecture.Improvement in students' grades was taken as the index for the effective engagement of the students.This method was compared with a control group.Overall the control group had scored 64% on the average, whereas the debates group scored 73% in the course.The debates group showed 14.1% improvement over the control group.In a two-tailed t test the calculated t value was 2.7.The improvement of the debates group was statistically significant at an alpha value of 0.05.The result of t test confirmed that debates are a powerful tool in effectively engaging the students.The authors plan to extend the application of the debates concept to three other courses over the next three years.