Enhancing student communication skills via debating engineering ethics

Abstract

In Engineering, the construction of informed, persuasive and convincing arguments is at the very core of everyday practice. However, in taught postgraduate education there is often an excessive focus on assessment of these skills through written arguments or oral presentations that are usually in the form of long uninterrupted monologues, where the construction of the arguments themselves is almost never challenged. To change this status quo, we have successfully pioneered the use of oral debate as a dynamic and engaging mechanism to develop and assess this skill in our Chemical Engineering MSc students. Debate is an ideal mechanism to assess our students’ ability to construct arguments as it actively encourages them to (1) think about both sides of an argument, (2) consider how they can persuade others and (3) express their viewpoint professionally but with conviction. For this reason, the debates undertaken were linked to important engineering ethical dilemmas, by discussing topics such as “should developing countries prioritise the shift to clean energy over economic growth”. The development of this debate-based training and assessment has had numerous positive outcomes on the students’ learning experience and vital skills development. Importantly students found the debates to be both an interesting and enjoyable method of assessment and noted that the skills learned would be useful in their future careers. In this concept paper we present our experiences in delivering debate assessments to engineering students along with recommendations for practitioners wishing to implement similar styles of performative assessments in their own pedagogy.