Major Writing Project

Be it Resolved: Scientists and Engineers must Debate to Create a Better and Peaceful World

Alex Aravind Department of Computer Science

University of Northern British Columbia, Canada E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract—Scientists and engineers have influenced and transformed the world in both constructive and destructive directions. Since politicians and executives are decision makers, undoubtedly, to a larger extend, they should share the major blame for many destruction. However, we believe, it is also the inability and hence the silence of scientists and engineers (SEs) equally contributed to the cause. Therefore, it is the time for SEs to take an active role in shaping the future for our generations to have a peaceful world.

As computing is influencing every aspect of our life, computer scientists and engineers (CSEs) have a major role to play in this mission. For that, they must to be trained on creative thinking and effective communication. Debating and technical writing are two most powerful ways to acquire these skills, and they are generally touted as requirements mainly for arts, management, and social science students. We advocate the need for training CSEs on debating skill so that they can effectively promote a peaceful world. The big question is how to include debate in core technical courses? To answer that, we will share our experience of having debates in some core computer science courses.

Keywords—soft skills; debate skill; creative thinking; so- cially responsible scientists and engineers; socially responsi- ble computer scientists.

I. INTRODUCTION

For humans, learning comes naturally. At young age,

we could learn many complex tasks such as picking

up a language, riding a bicycle, swimming, etc. quite

easily, irrespective of our social, economic, or ethnic

background. We are blessed with unending curiosity, and

we keep learning many basic life skills with little to

no effort. With proper support and effort, learning new

things should not be so difficult. If that is not the case,

we need to re-evaluate the effectiveness of our current

approaches to teaching and learning. Since education has

the greatest ability to influence and shape our society

positively or negatively, teaching and learning cannot be

taken for granted until it is proven effective.

The world has changed so much in the recent past

and is expected to change at a faster rate in the fu-

ture. Education has to catch up to stay relevant. The

accelerated change can be attributed in a large extent

to the growth and applications of computer science. In

the past, knowledge was available only in books. Now,

due to the advancement of computing technologies, it is

available at our fingertips. As a result, change and growth

are fast in all dimensions including society, technology,

environment, etc.

As scientists and engineers have been busy devising

tools and solving mostly technical problems, policy

makers have started to gain enormous control in shaping

the world mostly driven by money and power. This has

taken the world in some catastrophic directions. A well

known example is global warming and its impact to

humanity. Now the question is how do we steer this

trend so that the world could be a peaceful place to

live. The part of the answer, we believe, is that scientists

and engineers should not only be good at devising tools

and solving problems. We should do more by effectively

educating the public to be aware of their good and bad,

and hence influence policy makers to devise policies

towards constructive and peaceful directions. Debate is

a skill required to achieve that goal.

II. DEBATE AS AN ACTIVE LEARNING TECHNIQUE

Debate hones several important life skills. Debate is

not only a necessary skill to win arguments, it is also

an effective learning technique. For most, it is fun.

Knowingly or unknowingly, we debate all the time.

Before we outline the benefits of debates, we reproduce

its definition from [13]: “A debate is an equitably struc-

tured communication event about some topic of interest,

with opposing advocates alternating before a decision-

making-body.” It has several important keywords that

978-1-5386-7764-3/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE

need to be emphasized. A debate must be equitably

designed. It brings the aspects of fairness and equality to

the forefront. It must be structured to control time and

the communication pattern, and that, in turn, will help

to prepare and sharpen strategies and arguments.

One of America’s leading debate proponents, Robert

Branham, lists four characteristics of argument for a

true debate [13]:(i) development of ideas and positions (involves description, explanation, and demonstration);

(ii) clash (refuting ideas); extension (defending ideas against refutation); and (iv) perspective (derive essence or sum of ideas and arguments and relate it to a larger

question at hand). During the developmental phase of

a debate, students are forced to deeply examine and

conduct research on the topic at hand. This process

involves applying logic, reason, and analysis to formulate

an idea or opinion. Then, they must construct a plan

to unify their positions. This requires leadership, team-

work, and effective coordination and communication. In

essence, debate is a dynamic learning process involving

taking a position, expressing a point of view, contem-

plating alternates, looking for connectivity, and more

importantly, being calm and composed to keep the team

engaged.

Debate has a long list of benefits [1], [3], [7], [9]–

[11], [13], [14]. Some important benefits are that it:

(i) enables participation and involvement; (ii) enforces

the participants to provide response; (iii) engages the

participants in independent thinking; (iv) forces the par-

ticipants to pay attention and listen; (v) compels partici-

pants to analyze, create logical connectivity, and expose

inconsistencies and contradictions; (vi) heightens the

participants’ mental alertness and quick thinking; (vii)

encourages the participants to deconstruct and articulate

ideas; (viii) forces the participants to think on their feet;

(ix) sharpens spontaneity; (x) helps participants to reduce

fear and anxiety; (xi) increases participants’ clarity,

encourages critical thinking, and builds self confidence;

(xii) helps to understand different modes of influence

(e.g., persuasion), and hence, prepares to apply and

resist appropriately; (xiii) provides opportunities for the

participants to understand and appreciate different points

of view on the same issue and different solutions to the

same problem; etc.

III. DEBATE IN COMPUTER SCIENCE

When the concept of having debates in a computer

science course was brought to the attention of others,

the immediate reaction was: How do you have debate

in a highly technical subject like computer architecture

and organization? From our experience, as computer

science courses are enriched with creativity, powerful

ideas, techniques, and theories, incorporating debate in

computer science courses is easy and highly relevant.

Obviously, debate can be used to gain a deeper under-

standing of the important subject matters and big topics.

The skills developed through such exclusive debates can

implicitly help group works that are the norm in com-

puter science projects. Debating is a dynamic process.

First, it can be used to learn technical matters. Then,

through the experience gained, personal and professional

skills can be cultivated and enriched throughout the study

period. For example, in computer science, designing,

building, testing, and managing systems quite often

involves group work. The debate processes could be

effectively applied to execute these tasks involved in the

courses.

A. Impact of Debate in CS Education

Since debate involves higher-order critical thinking

skills such as defining the problem, building arguments,

researching for evidence, assessing the credibility of

sources, identifying and challenging assumptions, rec-

ognizing inconsistencies, prioritizing the relevance of

multiple viewpoints, etc., its impact on overall develop-

ment of cognitive and communication skills is evident

[1]–[3], [9], [13], [14]. In addition to deepening the

understanding of the subject matter, debate has the

potential to enrich social skills such as receptiveness,

respecting others’ view, helping each other, convincing

others, etc. Such social skills are valued as vital not

only for success in most careers [12], but also for life

in general [6], [10], [13], [15]. Therefore, we believe

that the impact of debate on computer science education

need not be different [6], [8], [15]. Though we have

not collected any formal survey or feedback from the

students who participated in the course debates, we did

receive informal and anecdotal feedback. The reactions

from the students were highly positive, confirming our

initial belief.

When debate was introduced in Fall 2014 into our

operating systems course, the initial reaction from sev-

eral students were mixed; they reluctantly agreed. Some

openly doubted its use in the computer science courses,

particularly highly technical subjects like operating sys-

tems. For them, only social science students needed

debating skills, and also only social science topics could

be debated. Some wondered what kind of topics from

core course like operating systems could be debated.

Slowly, this nebulous feeling started to fade once they

started their research on the topics. The competitive

nature brought enthusiasm among students about the idea

of debating, and at the end, most students liked it. A

few international students for whom English was their

second language understood the benefits of debate, but

expressed reservation due to their language difficulty.

However, once debate became an integral component of

some of our courses, it became one of the trademarks

of our teaching style. Students now have accepted it

and many explicitly appreciate the idea of debate and

the technical report on the topic. Some even consider

them as the main strengths of the course. In our view,

debate not only helped students to enrich their skills and

understand the topics deeply, it also left them with a

positive memory about the experience.

IV. CONCLUDING REMARKS

Since its birth in the mid 1940s, computer science has

grown as an attractive discipline encompassing science,

engineering, art, business, and everyday life [4]. In

the scientific domain, it has emerged as the “fourth

great domain of science”, after physical, life, and social

sciences [5], [6]. In the modern world, it is hard to

imagine anything in our day-to-day life that does not

touch computing in some sort. Computer science has all

the motivations to be learned and engaged with.

As computer science has influenced and influencing

the world in every aspect, it is also our responsibility to

steer the world in the positive direction. That requires us

to become better debaters as well.

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