Stephen Downes

This blog post is based on an article by the author in the Chronicle (archived here) criticizing the design of public debate platforms in use at some colleges. The platforms solicit students' opinions on various controversial subjects and then pair those with opposing views to stimulate debate, evaluating students on how well they articulated and defended their beliefs. "Both Sway and Dialogues have sold universities on the idea that on top of all the other metrics and data being collected, they need now to elicit students' political beliefs as raw material for institutional assessment," writes Hollis Robbins. It seems odd to me to begin on a point of disagreement. Discussion - any discussion - begins with a point in common, even if that point is agreement on a problem that needs to be solved, or even "what should we do next?" Points of disagreement may emerge, but these are not the focus and objective of the exercise. And yeah - people should not be required to express their views on whatever the topic of the day happens to be, whether in the service of 'viewpoint diversity' or 'your pronouns'. Sometimes, it is genuinely 'none of your beeswax'.