Debate : An Activity to Enhance Collaboration in Online Courses

Abstract

This paper will discuss the experience of using “debate” in online courses, and how argumentation helps in increasing the collaboration among online Graduate students. The paper investigated the relationship between the degree of online collaboration and quality of debate among four teams. Eighteen online graduate students were assigned in four teams of equal strength to work on a debate project during a 13 week semester. Data from discussion threads, emails, chat, online journals, and scores in the debate project were collected and analyzed. Hathorn and Ingram’s four online group collaboration characteristics were used as the basis of our analysis. Our results indicate a strong relationship between the degree of online collaboration and quality of debate as indicated by teams’ scores in these debates.