Gordon Mitchell on Ethics and Evidence – Repost from edebate 5-18-09

The following is a repost of an edebate post from Gordon Mitchell, Director of UPitt’s William Pitt Debating Union.  It is one of the most comprehensive and useful posts on ethics and evidence I have seen to date.  I believe this will be a big issue in the coming years in debate and getting ahead [...]

Black Participation in CEDA 20 Years Later?

Peter Loge wrote this paper in 1990 for the Speech Communication Assocation conference.  It seems that this coming year would be a good time to revisit it – two decades later.  With Towson teams deep in outrounds at both CEDA Nationals and the NDT, but without the changes suggested in Peter Loge’s paper in place [...]

Debate as Curriculum

I remember joking around with people I went to college with that I wanted to start my own charter high school where all of the curriculum matter revolved around the high school debate topic for the year.  It would be the perfect way to solve the competition between homework and debate research – they would [...]

Series: Web 2.0 for Forensics – Part I

I’ve been trying to incorporate a little more of the web 2.0 programs in my academic life, and this has led me to consider the way these same programs can be used for forensics.  So, I am going to start brainstorming ideas for using different tech to make our forensics lives easier and turn them [...]

Economist online debates

Looking for a way to get your debaters and/or argumentation students involved in a debate outside the walls of the classroom or tournament setting?  The Economist is hosting a series of online debates between experts and inviting online readers to participate in the debates as well as the evaluations of those debates.  The current debate [...]

Importance of research on forensics – A DOF Perspective

A few posts ago, I posted the link to an article discussing the importance of research to the graduate student assistants who work with forensics teams.  In that same issue of the National Forensic Journal, an article discussed the importance of research from a Director of Forensics perspective.  Robert C. Aden, former Director at University of Wisconsin-Eau [...]

Research on forensics – a little inspiration

A few days ago, I posted an article from the National Forensic Journal on how to effectively do research on forensics.  Although the article was from 1990, I thought much of it was still valuable information.  Another article in that same issue of the Journal also has some valuable insights into doing research on forensics, so I [...]

Forensics Research – What NOT to do (and some things you should do)

Research is important.  It is important to our activities, it is important to our professional positions and it is particularly important to our graduate students.  Many students who devote a significant amount of time to this activity look to include the activity in their graduate research projects.  After all, it offers them an easy audience [...]

Online Resource – PBS Point of View series

I am searching for interesting material to use in my Argumentation and Debate class next semester and came across the PBS website for their Point of View series.  I’ve used Frontline material in my classes before and thought it was great, but I haven’t used any of the POV stuff.  But, it seems perfect for [...]

CEDA 40 – A Research Initiative

This post went out on edebate in early September, but I missed posting it here on the blog.  Gordon Stables, 2nd VP for CEDA as of this year, is rallying our members for research on our activity.  In the interest of maintaining his message, I am simply pasting it below.  It is my intent to [...]