Moving In-Class Debates Online: Deliberating Contentious Issues in an Asynchronous Classroom

Ensuring that students in asynchronous classrooms are afforded similar opportunities to develop business-relevant skills and knowledge has become an increasingly important area as many universities have expanded their online course offerings. In this article, I document a format translation of an in-class debate into a highly flexible and generalizable exercise for an asynchronous classroom. Drawing on previous work on in-class debates and rhetorical strategies, I adapt the in-class group debate format, to an asynchronous undergraduate Human Resource Management course, to foster active learning among students while tackling contentious subjects within the field. Moreover, this versatile exercise can be applied effectively in a wide variety of management courses. I begin by outlining the benefits of debates in a business education context, describe the learning objectives of the exercise, offer numerous sample debate questions, and conclude by providing all relevant teaching notes and instructions.