Conclusion
This research advances knowledge of the affordances and limitations of single versus multimode debate designs for achieving critical thinking. The implications of the study are useful, more specifically, to inform modality decisions for in-person courses.
Although we found that two modalities did not contribute to greater achievement of the learning outcome, we did find other good reasons to consider including an online debate prior to in-class debates: students were more prepared and experienced greater enjoyment of the in-class debates.
Future Research
Our findings inspired us to dream of future research, by us or others. We thought of two other approaches to advance understanding of the role of modalities in debates for achieving the learning outcome of critical thinking.
- Compare the debate design to see the impact on the learning outcome:
- Control the requirement that students argue both sides of the debate, with one section where students argue only one side and the other section following the same two-sided design as in this study
- Comparing the multimodal design in this study with other modalities: in-person only and online only
