Classroom Activities

One of the best ways to promote a culture of open inquiry in classroom is to include activities where everyone can participate. For particularly sensitive topics, instructors may want to facilitate this by assigning positions, or by providing opportunities for silent participation. Here are some classroom activities that you can use to help students feel comfortable expressing themselves in the classroom. These activities can also enable students to see controversial moral and political topics from multiple perspectives. 

Full Participation Activities 

1. Tent Card Voting: If students use tent cards with their names on them, instructors can also use these tent cards to enable low-stakes silent participation during class discussions. For example, an instructor may say something like, "put your tent card up if you think that Hobbes's view of human nature was basically correct." Try to frame the question in a way where you can then follow up with people who didn't put their cards up. So with this example, the follow-up question would be, "For those with their cards down, where does Hobbes go wrong?" This strategy prompts students who were less engaged to re-engage with the conversation by defending their decision to keep their cards down.  

2. Moving Debate: Structure a debate about the material around a series of yes/no questions. Students can move to the right or the left to signal their agreement with the questions. As students move, instructors can prompt them to explain why they are walking (or staying put). For example, a moving debate about the Trolley Problem may begin with "Should you turn the trolley on the one" and then ask, "Should you push the man off the bridge?" If people walk from the yes side to the no side of the room, the instructor can then ask them why they switched, and so on, with subsequent versions of the problem. 

3.  Fighting Words: Students are asked to write down three things that they sincerely believe and are willing to defend but which they think other students in the class will disagree with. They then share their three propositions with a partner and choose the most disagreeable. They then take their disagreeable opinion to a larger group, which selects the most disagreeable in the group to compete in front of the whole class for the "fighting words championship." The winner of Fighting Words receives a fancy certificate congratulating them on their courage and disagreeableness. 

De-biasing Activities  

4. Counterfactual History: Think of a policy that your political party or ideological group believes, and construct the counterfactual history where the other party or ideological group happened to arrive at your conclusion and your side came to the opposite conclusion. Use the premises and values that your party believes in to defend the policies they argued against. (This also works with assigned positions) 

5. One Right Thing: Write down one thing that you think people with a different partisan or ideological identity are correct about and that people with your partisan or ideological identity are wrong about. How would you make the case for your side to change their mind? 

6. Policy Board: In round 1, students write a list of policy reforms and promising ideas related to the lesson/topic on the board. In round 2, students then write on notecards policies that they would reject or take off the board. The instructor then reads the notecards and leads a general discussion about the reasons against the policies that the class proposed.  

Assigned Positions 

7. Hot Seat Debates: Students are assigned to defend a position. In small groups, they develop a strategy to defend their side of the argument. Then they pair off in front of the class, debating for their team until everyone in the class has contributed to the debate. Sometimes it helps to structure the debate around certain topics. For example, when debating libertarianism vs. socialism, you can have each team prepare to defend their assigned position on questions like immigration, aid to the poor, and taxes. As these debates continue, it's a good idea for the instructor to keep track of the arguments on the board or on a screen so that students do not repeat arguments and so that they can have a visual  representation of the merits of both sides. 

8. Four Corners: Round 1: Students are divided into 3-5 groups to defend 3-5 policies or positions. Their teams must then defend their corners by presenting the best case for their position to the class, and answering questions from the students in other corners. Round 2: students can move to whatever corners they want, and continue to defend their positions, move to corners, and refine their views in the physical space of the classroom by standing between corners. 

9. Ethical Issue Speed Dating: Students line up in two rows. One row represents one side of a debate and another row represents a different side. The instructor calls out various applications or questions for each side to debate. Every 3 minutes, a new topic is called and one row of students moves over a seat and debates a new student about a new topic. For example, one row may be assigned to defend the Republican Party against the other row, which is the Democratic Party. The instructor could then call out debate questions from a recent debate, and have the students defend their assigned positions. 

10. Last Student Standing: Students all stand to debate the instructor about a topic. Once they've talked, they can sit down. The debate continues until all students have talked. This is a good activity when the class is likely to be generally in agreement about an issue that nevertheless merits a further defense. For example, the instructor may defend a Kidney Tax against the class. Reluctant speakers have an incentive to talk early because the arguments will become more difficult as the debate goes on. 

11. Reacting Games: Students participate in a historical simulation of a time when people were debating controversial moral and political questions. 

Anonymous/Silent Activities  

12. Position Board: The instructor writes a grid that lays out various positions in a debate, and students can write their initials, or even a symbol that doesn't identify them, on various parts of the grid. For example, in a discussion of paternalism an instructor may make a grid where each column describes a dangerous activity and the rows are "permit' 'or 'prohibit.' This activity can give the class a quick visual representation of what everyone thinks, without putting anyone on the spot to defend their whole theory. 

13. Anonymous Discussion: The instructor sends students an invitation to a GoogleDoc that they can anonymously edit. Each student chooses a color and font that identifies them. Then the students participate in a silent discussion, which is projected onto the screen in class. This gives students an opportunity to try out arguments and positions that they may be reluctant to attach their names to. For example, instructors may consider using this strategy in a discussion of infanticide. To get the conversation going, the instructor should also use a few different color/font combinations to represent potential positions that people may have. 

14. Note Card Feedback: Midway through a discussion of a sensitive topic, an instructor can distribute notecards enabling anonymous feedback. For example, the instructor may ask, "What's something you wish someone had brought up by now?" or "what do you think other people are thinking but not saying about this topic?"