Sarah Moon
Assignments & Activities Archive
Activity Description
This activity is inspired by work done at the Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse Faculty Seminar and the National Issues Forum approach to deliberative discourse. The activity goal is to provide opportunities to channel research and rhetorical education toward live, extemporaneous speech, not in a debate format but in a discourse that works toward a class consensus on a topic of interest chosen by the class. The assignment is completed live in class with two days of group preparation provided beforehand. As a class, the first step is to generate a list of potential issues (local, regional or national) from which the class will select their focus topic for the discourse. The class then generates a list of potential stances on this topic and students then vote on which stance they would like to take, forming class groups representing the different stances. Groups then work together inside and outside of class to generate support for their stance that comes both from their personal experience and research. After 120 minutes of discussion across two class periods, we determine a consensus on which stance or combination of stances offers the best approach to the issue.