Structured Academic Controversy is introduced to be a type of cooperative learning strategy where controversial issues are learnt and discussed from multiple perspectives by small teams of students. It is a technique and a way discovered and designed especially for students to get engaged in a controversy and then guide them to seek consensus. Students in such teams learn about opinions and views of other people as well as put forth theirs and attempt to agree politely with what they are convinced and also try to convince people to what they disagree without hurting sentiments of the opponent teams.
Contents
General Protocol for Cooperative Group Strategies for Structured Academic Controversy
Working of SAC
The activity of SAC begins with the selection of a topic by the instructor with varied viewpoints (e.g., Political reign should be or not be in the hands of the youth.). The topic for discussion once selected is then imported to students who decide and divide accordingly into pairs or form groups based on the ideas they share and agree, and assigned on advocacy in the pairs. The group either receives supporting documents or researches the topic in the time available to them. A presentation is prepared wherein the student pairs highlight the main arguments for their position and presents it to the other pair in the group. The students listen and take thorough notes but are not permitted to ask questions, disagree or debate. After the presentations of other groups or pairs, students discuss their positions and come up with more in support evidence of their topic. With Their notes as a guide students switch advocacy positions. Then they prepare and give a new presentation. Finally, The advocacy roles are dropped by the students and a consensus report is generated addressing the original question posed.
This Academic Controversy enhances students skills including
Researching issues. Organizing information. Preparing a position. Advocating a position. Being able to rationalize one's position. Learning to debate. Evaluating strengths and weaknesses on both sides of an issue. Seeing issues from other perspectives. Reconceptualizing one's position. Synthesizing information. Reaching consensus. This structure of collaborative learning has Thoroughly been researched and many positive outcomes have been observed including complex reasoning skills, higher quality decision making, increased motivation and energy to action.