Teaching Innovation Workshop: “Academic debate: A pathway to argumentation and research culture”

This Arqus online workshop, organised by the Vilnius University, will showcase how academic debate can be used as an effective teaching activity to enhance students’ presentation skills, critical thinking, research abilities, argumentation, leadership, and teamwork.

Participants will learn how to develop students’ academic competencies for constructing research-based arguments. In addition, the seminar will illustrate how students can strengthen subject-specific skills, such as analysing discipline-related research articles and applying real-life examples.

The seminar will feature the demonstration of the academic debate activity, including its content, structure, and assessment strategies. Participants will be introduced to teaching worksheets, created specifically for this activity. The assessment strategy used for the debates will be explained, with an emphasis on innovative teaching methods such as flipped classroom sessions, peer-led debates and real-life scenario debate competitions.

As a highlight of the event, first-year VU undergraduate students from the Institute of International Relations and Political Science will engage in a live debate on the motion “Climate denialism should be criminalised during election campaigns.” The students, who have been developing their debate skills over the past three months (September to November 2024), will demonstrate their progress. Tomas Valiūnas and Ieva Navickaitė will represent the Proposition team, while Adrija Sagatytė and Kajus Razulevičius will debate on the Opposition side.

Trainers

Associate Professor Dr. Liudmila Arcimavičienė, Vilnius University, Faculty of Philology, Department of Foreign Language Teaching and Research

Date and time

• 26 November 2024
• From 14:00 to 15:30 CET
• Registration deadline: 21 November 2024

The link to the meeting will be provided by the facilitators and will only be sent to registered participants.