In Semester II 1998, four "on-line" DE students volunteered to trial an on-line debate in HST209 Public History. This was an extra-curricular activity with no marks awarded. Their presentations, as well as the motion, rules and adjudicators' comments will be found on the subject's public access forum on http://athene.mit.csu.edu.au/~rmclachl/hst209. On arrival, look for directions to the forum at the top of the page. Messages are posted in reverse chronological order (most recent at the top). This is an edited version of the debate. An unedited version - with cries of panic and moments of chaos - is on a closed forum.

I have long made use of debates with internal students. They are an excellent way to cap off a semester by having students review in a disciplined and structured way important but unresolvable issues tackled in their subject. Held in the last class, they also offer a sense of closure to the semester's work. With the DE debate, we used traditional debating rules and procedures but modified to allow for on-line involvement by students and judges from three countries (Australia, Canada and the USA).

About six weeks before the debate, I called for volunteers through our main subject forum. Volunteers were also asked to provide suggestions for a debate motion. Students posted their "volunteering" and proposed motions on the forum. I also posted the debate rules with a request for comment and suggestions. (The volunteers were a very mixed group - 1 undergraduate, 2 grad dips and 1 associate, in Canada.)

About three weeks before the debate, I selected a motion (with minor revision to the wording) from among those proposed and posted it on the forum for final comment. (Moved that "Public History should always be for the public good.") Soon after, I selected people for the two teams and made an "executive decision" on affirmative and negative sides. I also arranged for team members to be in contact with one another through email by emailing each student the email address of the other team member.

The student to student email exchanges worked better in theory than in practice. The problem is too complex and varied to discuss here. Because of email problems and frustrations, students in the end used the forum to post their messages or to contact one another. (I did not suggest the use of the forum in this way. This was their solution.)

While the teams worked independently on their arguments through email, forum and smoke signals and made decisions about speaking roles, I posted a (time limited) invitation for adjudicators on PUBLHIST, the list serve of the American National Council for Public History. Response was excellent, with about 8 enquiries of whom 5 participated. Email was used to brief adjudicators on arrangements and requirements.

Our debate commenced at 8 pm on a Wednesday with the debate's timing arranged to run over several days, including a weekend. The debate followed the normal speaker by speaker format. Each debater had a 24 hour window (8pm-8pm) in which to post their "argument". The first window, therefore, was from 8 pm Wednesday to 8pm Thursday.

Although there was a set sequence of presentations, it was not necessary for a debater to wait for the opening of their specified 24-hour time window. A debater could post at any time following the relevant posting by the other side. However, the next debater could still call for a 24 hour (8pm to 8 pm) window if needed. The sequential window arrangement appears to have worked. No one needed 24 hours but there was always a time gap of some hours between presentations. I doubt the practicality of having an on-line debate requiring all debaters and adjudicators to assemble simultaneously (live chat room) or even to log on over a span of days at specified times.

Because the adjudicators could not access the student's forum, I crossposted "arguments" onto a public forum used by this subject. See athene URL above. Although it is possible to obtain permission for outsiders to access the closed subject forum, for several reasons I prefer to crosspost onto an open forum. This allowed, for example, for anyone on the PUBLHIST list to respond to my invitation to view the debate and it reduced the risk of unwanted or inappropriate postings in the debate's (and students') forum space.

Instead of a time limit, "arguments" were limited in word length with opening and rebuttal arguments limited to 200 words and the summations to 100 words. A leeway of an additional 20% was allowed for length as I did not want students to be distracted by a word count at the expense of quality of argument. The word limits set seem to have been spot-on.

There were problems and there were moments of panic. One near disaster must be mentioned. The first speaker for the negative telephoned late on Friday afternoon (about four hours before her window closed) to say that her computer had just died and she was unable to post her argument. She was going to try on another computer at the local library (about to close) but failing that she would fax it to our school office from her father-in-law's fax machine. I asked for the school office to be kept unlocked just in case. Indeed, shortly after 5:00 pm, a handwritten fax arrived with her argument, which I entered for the student onto the forum. Note the different communication technologies involved and the need for backup systems. As part of the experiment, but now with some trepidation, I allowed the debate to proceed over the weekend with no monitoring or assistance on my part. Monday morning revealed that the debate had continued with no further drama; both rebuttal arguments were posted.

With the posting of the final summation, I emailed all adjudicators announcing the end of the debate, giving them approximately 48 hours (a GMT time was used) to submit decisions with the option of providing a brief critique which I would post on the student forum. Most did provide such critiques, which added value to the exercise.

Critiques were posted, votes were counted and the decision was posted. The motion was lost. The activity took about a week from the posting of the opening argument to the posting of the decision.

Comment from students and adjudicators has been positive but with critical comments by students on the difficulties encountered with student to student pre-debate email communication and the consequent need for more time to prepare for the debate. However, even with such problems, I feel the on-line debate was a worthwhile activity and that it did provide some of the benefits for students found with its internal equivalent.

I will attempt another debate in 1999 but again only as a voluntary activity as not all DE students have equal and adequate access to computers and on-line facilities. I may attempt the on-line debate earlier in the semester to help foster a sense of community among the DE students and I may try a debate with mixed teams of internal and external students.

Six students (three to a team) is probably both the ideal and the maximum number of students for an on-line debate. Other students (recommend an odd number - 3,5,7) could act as adjudicators, casting not only a vote but also posting a critique of the debate. I prefer the use of outside judges as this adds to the validity of the activity.

Caution is advised in attempting to run more than two debates simultaneously. Managing even one debate took considerable lecturer time and energy. To avoid confusion a separate forum thread will be required for each debate. An alternative arrangement with large classes might be to have an ongoing series of debates through the semester, each with its own motion and teams but open to all the class as spectators. I think there will continue to be problems with student email access and exchanges, so it may be advisable to set aside a forum thread for such purposes.

I encourage colleagues to give on-line debates a go but I also recommend application of the KISS approach.

Robin McLachlan