This topic will introduce the participants to a persuasive discussion format that is based on the Iowa Caucuses. Within this particular exemplar, an overview of an assignment provided on the ethical and social issues related to genetics and genomics will be provided.
Throughout the asynchronous online environment, one of the main barriers is lack of interactions among the students. This topic will introduce the participants to a persuasive discussion format that is based on the Iowa Caucuses which occurs every four years among candidates for the two major party nominations for President of the United States. Within this particular exemplar, an overview of an assignment provided on the ethical and social issues related to genetics and genomics will be provided. Like the Iowa Caucus process itself, the intent of this activity is to investigate and critically analyze perspectives on legal and policy issues relevant to genetics and genomics.
During this session, a review of how the caucus is created within the online learning platform will be provided. The session will showcase how two teams of students will be assigned a different perspective regarding the question posed for each caucus. Teams are encouraged to consider nuanced perspectives, rather than absolute pro or con positions.
The session will provide detailed information on how the discussion forum is divided into a 'preparation' forum and a 'caucus' forum. The 'preparation' forum is set up for the students to interact with one another by marshaling evidence and data to support and persuade others to their point of view. Then the group creates a persuasive video presentation that argues their point of view through evidence, creativity, and persuasiveness. The group has options for how to create the video either asynchronously or synchronously. Then they post the video to the 'caucus' forum.
The 'caucus' forum is a discussion board that is accessible to all students in the class to view each group's persuasive video. Within this forum, the students view each video from the perspective of a member of the general public and reflect on each video by responding to at least two group's videos. Then there is a voting tool that allows each student to vote on the video that is the most persuasive and the video that is the most evidence-based. At the end the activity, the results of the vote is posted for the class to see which group won the 'Most Persuasive' video and the 'Most Evidence-Based' video.
Level of Participation:
This session will allow participants to review and manipulate the two forums as well as the voting tool. Furthermore, the participants will be tasked with opportunity to create their own debate topics that they could utilize within their courses.
Goals of Session:
The objective of this session is to educate faculty and design thinkers on a debate caucus format that can replace the typical discussion board activity. Furthermore, by the end of this session, the participants should be able to develop at least one topic with two differing sides that their students can debate the pros and cons for each side.