Peer Debates

This week, I was given the opportunity to sit in on a round of peer debates that the Midwestern University Physical Therapy program held with its first-year students.

A bit of background here - I was on the speech team in high school, so I had the chance to observe these kinds of formal debates extensively. I always thought the format was fascinating even though I never tried it myself.

The most interesting part about it, to my way of thinking anyway, was that many times the debaters would be asked - or assigned - to either support a position that they personally opposed or oppose one they supported. Naturally, human nature being what it is, some participants took that assignment more seriously than others. The people who weren't interested in challenging their own beliefs were invariably the ones who lost the debate the quickest.

But those who threw themselves into the task with dedication ended up learning something new or at least informing their own opinions with context they hadn't considered before. To me, that was the greatest value of the debate - not entirely to win it, but to understand that almost every issue up for debate has facets and repercussions that can affect a person's interpretation of outcomes.

I can't pretend to know much about the field of physical therapy - at least, not nearly as well as even the first-year students who participated in the debates - but I knew enough to be completely captivated by the topics and the students' handling of them in front of their peers.

An enjoyable part of the debate format insisted that the audience be split by an aisle into two groups so that each group would physically align with either the proposition or opposition side. As the students made their four-minute arguments, the students in the audience would get up and cross the aisle to sit on the other side if their opinion was swayed by the presenting side. Sometimes this would even occur in the middle of the presentation, which would either encourage or distract the presenters depending on whether the relocation supported or opposed their argument.

Over the three-hour-plus duration of the debates, students were able to analyze both sides of issues ranging from whether employers should pay employees' professional association dues to whether PTs should be allowed to treat Medicare patients without a physician referral. Even for an outsider like me, the arguments for and against were compelling, and only rarely did the majorities for the "winning" side exceed single digits.

Overall, I personally learned a lot - and it seemed to me that the students did too. I can only hope that other programs at Midwestern University will consider adopting this debate format as a learning tool for their aspiring professionals.