Introduction

In the last decade, there has been a great deal of interest in active learning in higher education. In this form of learning, students are actively engaged by taking responsibility for their own learning while faculty members act as facilitators. Strategies for active learning include making presentations, brainstorming, role-playing and engaging in debates or round table discussion among others. Active learning can result in increased student participation, development of critical thinking skills and a deeper understanding of the subject. However, misconceptions and the costs of implementing active learning techniques deter faculty members from adopting these methods in their classrooms.

Among these techniques, classroom debates have been used mainly in humanities courses. However, after considering the potential benefits of active learning, I decided to experiment with incorporating debates into a postgraduate information systems module that I teach, "Electronic Government". This article describes how the experiment turned out.

"Electronic Government" is an evening module for part-time students. Most students taking the module are working adults who are tired after a full day at work. I envisaged that incorporating such an interactive element into the lectures would engage students in learning the subject matter actively and achieve better learning outcomes. Further, classroom debates seemed appropriate because the module involved some issues that were not clear-cut and hence, could potentially be clarified through debates.

Procedure

A week before a particular topic was to be discussed, students were posed a debate question dealing with an important issue related to the topic. To start them off, I gave students either a research or practice paper to read, though they were expected to explore the issue further by themselves. Four students were assigned to support the issue, while another four would speak against it. Students were assigned to the debate teams by their roll order instead of their project teams. This allowed them to interact with students other than those in their project teams.

The debate was designed to take place halfway through the class duration. For the debates, students were encouraged to use examples from their own work experience to support their points. I served as the moderator to keep time and to make sure that we were not digressing. Finally, a scribe was designated to note down the discussion and post it on the module's IVLE discussion forum for the rest of the class.

Findings and Conclusion

I conducted a student survey at the end of the course to evaluate the technique. Students indicated that the debates helped them in self-learning, learning from others in their groups, and thinking critically about the subject. Particularly, the debates helped students approach the subject with open minds by considering both sides of an issue. However, students did not find the debates useful in honing their communication skills because they had other means (e.g. class presentations) to develop these skills. Overall, students rated debates as a fun learning experience and did not want them to be replaced by lectures!

The only drawback was that students sometimes took the criticisms somewhat personally during debates and reacted negatively when their viewpoints were challenged. Students also suggested some changes such as having longer debates, providing a summary of both sides of the argument, and keeping to their project teams for debates. I discussed the feedback with students and came to the conclusion that it would be difficult to have longer debates as that would mean insufficient time to discuss the remaining course material. The feedback on providing a summary was incorporated into the subsequent offering of the course. Since working students found it difficult to meet up with students other than their project team members outside class hours, their suggestion to keep to the same teams was also implemented.

Overall, I felt that the extra effort I put in to design and implement the debates was worthwhile. Apart from the positive learning outcomes, I enjoyed the additional discussions stimulated by the debates, though I did have to act as a peacekeeper when the sessions became too heated! I would definitely continue to incorporate debates into my lectures and recommend the activity to other faculty members. Apart from students' suggestions, I have thought of other refinements to the debate format with which I would like to experiment in future offerings of the module.