Welcome to our first installment of this year’s Curriculum Corner series. I realize we are already a good way into the semester, however, I’ve had a pretty busy last few months. The plan is from here on out, though is to update the Curriculum Corner approximately once per week. In this first post, I am […]
Classroom, Curriculum Corner, Resources, VBI
Introduction More and more, fewer debaters are choosing to engage in framework debate, instead choosing to use preclusive strategies such as theory, or Kritiks that don’t use framework. I’m not going to claim that one strategy has merit over the other (I quite often do run critical arguments or directly topical arguments that don’t rely […]
Briefly, Opinion
Here is the most recent version of the topic list for next year. 1) In the United States, non-human animals ought to have legally protected rights. 2) Individuals are obligated to value the common good over their own interests. 3) Capital punishment is immoral. 4) In the United States, physician-assisted suicide of terminally ill patients ought to be […]
Briefly
Over the last few years, there has been a rise in self-contained 3-week long debate camps. Now, there is nothing new about a debate camp lasting three weeks. What has changed is that several camps, including VBI, have shifted from a model where students attend a 2-week main session followed by a smaller third week, […]
Curriculum Corner
This is our first installment of a new Curriculum Corner mini-series on the use of technology at debate camp. Several podcasts I listen to, such as Leading Lines and Teaching in Higher Ed, spend a lot of time discussing educational technology (EdTech). This has helped me compile a list of EdTech resources that I think […]
Curriculum Corner
Many of our Curriculum Corner posts have surveyed academic studies on effective teaching. These cover a small, though representative, sample of the articles we have been reading to prepare for camp. However, our choice to focus so much on academic research could be challenged. I have made the choice to prioritize data over my own […]
Curriculum Corner
Most camps’ curriculum focuses on mandatory periods student-staff interaction, ranging from group instruction (e.g. lab, modules), to one-on-one drill sessions (e.g. mentorship). These curricular elements are both required and, in general, staff driven. Most camps, then, supplement these required elements with optional student driven instruction. Some camps run office hours, others have evening work time […]
Curriculum Corner
Laptops are incredibly useful in debate. From the organizational and card cutting resources of verbatim, to the research opportunities enabled by easy internet access, to the ability to share content with one another by email, to small time-savers like text expanding, laptops save time, increase the quantity and quality of a debater’s output, and are […]
Curriculum Corner
So, it turns out that a lot of debate instructors, myself included, have been running drills the wrong way. I came to this startling and bothersome realization while reading two books, both of which I highly recommend. The first book is Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter Brown, Henry Roediger III, […]
Curriculum Corner
In this post, I will introduce and explain the ‘Student Clubs’ program that we will be running at VBI this summer. This is a brand new curricular element at VBI, and indeed I don’t know of any camps that run a program of this sort.[1] Thus, I want to start this post by explaining the […]
Curriculum Corner