PSYCHODEBATES

The School of Psychology is proud to announce the Psychodebates: a series of academic debates taking place throughout the academic year.

Why a debate?

The academic debates aim to offer the academic community the opportunity to

collaborate and interact in a novel and unconventional learning environment.

Debating on a controversial issue promotes self reflection, critical thinking, team

building and public speaking skills. Moreover, participating in a debate educates the

audience to carefully listen to the arguments of the opponents, to question one’s own

position, to value the possibility to change opinion, to refine one’s own argumentation

or to incorporate new ones.

Organization

An appointed Panel, comprising students and professors, is in charge of organizing the yearly calendar of debates, receiving and evaluating the proposals for new debates, approving and supervising the organization of each individual debate by the Debate Organizers.

Outline of the structure of a debate

Each debate is about a controversial issue (motion). E.g. “Class lectures should always be broadcasted via zoom”. The argumentations and the team of speakers in favour of themotion constitute the “proposition”. Arguments and the team against the motionconstitute the “opposition”.

A moderator (either a professor or a student) chairs and coordinates the whole debate, introduces the motion and the teams, ensures that rules are respected and supervises the traditional final voting.

Each speaker has a limited and predefined time (e.g. 3 minutes) to discuss his/her argumentations and convince the audience in favour of his/her position and, thus, that of their team.

The debate is followed by a conclusive recap (rebuttal) where one member of each team (e.g., the leader) has the opportunity to respond to the issues raised by the opposite team.

The debate may or may not be followed by brief interventions from the audience, under the lead of the moderator.

For more details on how an academic debate is structured : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TSkkxu8on0

Contacts

For more information, to submit a debate proposal, and/or to participate as a speaker: debate.psicologia@unipd.it 

Videos designing and editing: Jenny Grigoropoulou