DAC Resources
The DAC initiative provides faculty with comprehensive tools and support to integrate debate into their courses effectively. From customized debate design to structured facilitation and post-debate reflection, DAC ensures an engaging and impactful experience for students. Additional resources, including evaluation rubrics, deliberation exercises, and access to the Argutopia platform, further enhance learning outcomes. Whether refining critical thinking or fostering meaningful dialogue, DAC equips educators with everything needed to make debate a powerful tool in the classroom. Click to explore how these resources can enrich your teaching.
DAC Debates
To Get Started
A DAC debate begins with a consultation with one of the DAC faculty to design your students’ debate experience. We’ll discuss the instructional outcomes you’re pursuing and what subject matter would work best for a DAC debate. The DAC faculty will suggest a topic and focus that aligns with your goals.
Design Debate Exercises
DAC will then work with you to design a debate exercise for your class according to your preferences. Our typical debate exercise involves three phases, each of which is led by a DAC faculty:
Preparation
In the preparation phase, a DAC faculty visits your class to introduce the topic, assign students their advocacy roles and explain their responsibilities to prepare for their participation in the debate.
Debate
A DAC faculty will return to your class to facilitate the debate. They’ll guide students turns, facilitate Q&A between the advocates and keep the debate on track so that you’re free to focus on the substance of the students’ arguments.
Debrief
In their final visit to your class, the DAC faculty will lead a debrief session that asks the students to reflect upon their experience. Students will be challenged to consider the arguments in the debate as well as the process of debating. We welcome your involvement in this phase to comment on the arguments exchanged relative to the course focus.
There are nearly infinite variations on this base model of debate. For example, we’ve designed multi-sided debates for faculty who wanted to address material that doesn’t fit neatly into a Pro/Con debate. We also have worked extensively with faculty who want a more intense debrief experience, utilizing a digital platform to facilitate student deliberation on the question posed by the debate topic. You can read more about that in the “Deliberation” section below.