The RDI Lincoln-Douglas program at the University of Nevada Las Vegas is an intensive, research and practice focused laboratory for Lincoln Douglas students. It will focus on substantial topic and philosophy instruction, directed assignments, and full practice rounds mixed with mini debates to focus on specific skills. It will provide tangible assessments to both students and coaches. Our lab will attempt to cater to students who have finished at least one year of debate through an increased use of classroom teaching method in a summer setting.
The RDI LD program’s objective is to prepare debaters to become future leaders on their teams. We will teach the skills that allow students to take leadership roles on their teams in terms of evidence production, preparation, and debate technique. Toward that goal, we will focus on Foundational Skills – the skills that enable other secondary objectives and practices. Those Foundation Skills may not directly translate into specific round situations, but will provide the basis for students to learn the habits and skills that will win those rounds. They are the skills that coaches want every student to learn and bring back from institute. For our program, we will focus on Preparing Evidence, The Flow, Comparisons, and Philosophy.
Primary Objectives – Foundational Skills
- Preparing Evidence
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Topic research provides the foundation for constructing cases on each topic. However, too often, topic specific evidence is unprepared to be used in a debate round, and becomes secondary to technique. We believe that preparing cards well is critical to improving virtually every other area of debate. A well tagged card clarifies the argument to the judge and debater, assists the judge in flowing, begins the process of comparison, enhances word economy and efficiency, and teaches good writing skills. A bad tag can make the best evidence useless, and a bog down the best speaker. We will focus instruction on how to find quality articles, identify relevant evidence, and write good tags with specific lectures, pre-block exercises, and group review work. Every tag written for every card for every file written in our lab will be read by a lab leader, corrected, returned and explained. Students will review hundreds of tags to see how they can improve their own.
- The Flow
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Flowing a debate is not just writing notes. The Flow is a structural and conceptual system of listening, writing, thinking and speaker that organizes a whole round. No other debate skill can be improved if it is not organized. We will focus on flowing from Day One, emphasizing its importance, demonstrating it, and then requiring it in practice. Every mini debate and practice debate will include a focus on flowing, or a flowing component. Practice round flows will be examined, and comments will be geared toward how they could have improved their speeches by improving their flowing.
- Comparisons
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Every argument is a debate needs to be made in service of Comparison. Comparing frameworks, comparing impacts, comparing evidence, comparing warrants, comparing qualifications, comparing values – all of these are the skills that are needed to bring a debater to the advanced level. We will focus on teaching the skills necessary to make comparisons – identification, indictment and critical thinking. We will focus, through lecture and mini debate, on teaching these comparison skills. Every practice debate will emphasize how the comparisons in the round could be improved.
- Philosophy
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Philosophic concepts are referred to in debate rounds without the background reading to ensure that they are being used properly. The study of philosophy is obviously too complex and deep to cover in a ten day camp, but students can be introduced to some of the basic schools of philosophic thought, and some of the primary authors that they should be familiar with. At a minimum, students will study Locke, Mill, Nozick, Rawls, and Kant. Students will be assigned readings from these authors, and will participate in discussions and exercises to reinforce those readings. Lectures will supplement those readings.
Supporting Practices
- Research Assignments
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Students will prepare a research file based on one of the potential upcoming Lincoln Douglas topics. We will research and write a major affirmative and a major negative case, along with answers to potential arguments against each. The student-bracketed articles will be read and corrected by a lab leader. The final file will be organized by students, and then corrected by a lab leader. The corrections, both for the articles and the files, will be explained to students, both verbally and in writing. Our task is not to produce great files, but to teach How to write great files.
- Diagnostic Tests
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Students will be given diagnostic tests at the beginning and end of the lab, focusing on knowledge of debate concepts, writing skills, and philosophy. The primary emphasis will be on tracking improvement and identifying areas for further work.
- Lectures
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Students will receive lectures on both resolution specific topics and on basic philosophical positions. The lectures will be a mix of Inverted Lectures – where students read related materials and come prepared for a discussion or exercise based on the reading, Traditional Lectures – where lab leaders will explain issues to the entire group, and Student Lectures – where students will explain issues to the entire group.
- Mini Debates
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We will have a substantial number of mini debates or exercises designed to focus on a specific skill and to maximize redundant learning and student participation. Some examples: Value Comparison drills, Impact Calculus drills, Speech Prep Drills, Line by Line drills, Evidence comparison drills, Cross examination drills, and Flowing drills.
- Practice Debates
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While mini debates can enhance specific skills, full practice debates are necessary to teach strategic thinking and choice making, to implement all of the specific skills, and to show students how specific skills fit into a larger context. Students will participate in at least 5-6 full practice debates. Most, although not all, practice rounds will have rebuttal reworks, and some, although not most, will be recorded to assist reworking them.
- Feedback
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We will provide on-going feedback to coaches and students of their progress. For students, we will provide continuous one-on-one feedback during assignments and drills, as well as written comments about practice rounds and mini debates. For coaches, we will provide the same written comments, access to the diagnostic tests and corrected research assignments, and a summary after the end of the camp. We will also provide a continually updated schedule of events, so coaches can track what their students are doing. These will be provided through emails, Dropbox, and potentially a google group.