Wikidebates:Educational Use and Purposes

If you are a teacher and are interested in debates and critical opinion-related topics, you might consider having your students contribute to Wikidebates by structuring and summarising a debate.

Who is it for?

Students aged 10 to 18
University students or any adult higher learning program

What are the tasks?

A complete or partial elaboration of a Wikidebates entry, the broad content of which includes:

An introduction;
A comprehensive and structured summary of the “pro” and “con” arguments;
For each of those, a short description and its dedicated page;
For each of those, corresponding refutals or objections;
For each argument or objection, one or more citation;
Referenced sources such as a bibliography, websites or videography.

How can it be done?

In classroom workshops
As homework projects
Part of school-sponsored internships/youth projects

What are the general goals?

Discovering the principles of democratic exchange and debate culture;
Learning critical thinking;
Learning to tackle complicated issues in all their complexity;
Learning to structure and summarise thoughts regarding a given problem;
Learning to deal with conflicting opinions.

What are the skills developed?

Learn how to research arguments amongst different sources and media;
Learn to analyse a given problem and breaking it down into different arguments;
Learn how to separate and organise pro and con positions, and their respective objections;
Learn to write concise and structured introductions and descriptions for each argument;
Learn to reference your sources;
Learn to use game-changing collaborative digital tools such as Mediawiki, Twitter, Slack/Framateam, Google Docs/Framapad.

Some examples (in French)

Should freedom of speech be limited? A page created during a cross-topical workshop including Literature and History by French middle school pupils aged 10-14, June 2017.
Are vaccines dangerous? Scientific sources added to the debate by undergraduate Biology students, September 2017.
Are professional Football players overpaid? Collection of arguments and objections written by French graduate students in Social Sciences, Evry University, November 2017.
Should borders be abolished? A page created by high school students of Tremblay-en-France, April 2018.

Helpful links

Using a wiki;
Structure a debate;
Write a page debate;
Table of contents of “help” pages.

About us

The governing body includes teachers, writers, engineers, students, health professionals; all members of the French “Laboratoire du débat méthodique”.

How we can help

Help you get familiar with Wikidebates’s tools and its method;
Provide guiding and counselling for contributors.

Contact

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