Distance learning: using Breakout rooms for Debate
Friday 24 April 2020
Distance learning need not put an end to class debates! Fortunately Zoom, Google and MS Teams all allow for groups to work together online. On this page, we give some suggestions on how to set up a historical debate using Zoom breakout rooms.
Setting up the debate
Most historical topics lend themselves to a debate involving two or more teams (we have given some suggestions for debate topics below).
1. Preparation
Students will need to have prepared for the debate and completed research and notes beforehand. You can let them know in advance which side they will be arguing, or alternatively only allocate 'sides' during the lesson so that they have to have prepared for both arguments. If you want to make it more structured, you could, for example, ask each student to prepare 3 key arguments with at least one piece of evidence to support each argument and at least one quote from an historian.
2. Writing speeches
Students need to be divided into teams - each one in a different breakout room. (See below for how to set up Breakout Rooms). If you are doing a formal debate with 3 speakers, students will then have 20/25 minutes to decide on the key points that their team want to make and to decide which speaker will cover which points. You could also set extra criteria e.g. each speech should include at least one reference to an historian as evidence for a point.
3. Conducting the debate
After 20/25 minutes, students return to the main meeting room and the debate can then run as 'normal' with the first two speakers on each team taking it in turns to speak followed by a 10 minute question/open debate session in which all students can take part, and then a concluding speech from each side.
If you have a large class, you could always have four teams prepare in four breakout rooms and then two debates can be conducted in parallel. In this case, you will want to have a member of each group assigned as the alternative host so that they can record and then share their debate afterwards. Give them a fixed amount of time for the debate.
4. Follow-up
As a follow-up, students can use the arguments from the debate to write an essay plan or a full answer on the topic e.g. To what extent...
Suggestions for debates
Here are links to ATL pages on which we have suggested debate activities.
The First World War: 1. Europe and the First World War (ATL)
‘American participation spelled the defeat of Germany and its allies’
Appeasement: 1.2 German expansion (1933 - 1940) ATL
This House believes appeasement was a complete failure
Hitler's foreign policy: 1.2 German expansion (1933 - 1940) ATL
This House believes that Hitler was an opportunist in his foreign policy
Cold War: 2. Theme 2 - Leaders and Nations (ATL)
This House believes that Truman is responsible for the development of tension in Europe, 1945 - 49.
American civil war: 5. Factors affecting the outcome of the US Civil War
This House believes that Lincoln deserves the title 'the Great Emancipator'
Napoleon; 5. The rise and rule of Napoleon (1799 - 1814) (ATL)
This House believes that 'Napoleon the Great is an appropriate term for Napoleon Bonaparte'
Other activities that lend themselves to a debate online with teams preparing in breakout rooms could include for example:
- putting a key historical figure on trial (see Yuan Shi-kai: 1. Rise of national identity in China (ATL))
- a role play involving different teams/delegations such as the one on the Versailles Conference: 3. First World War: Effects (ATL).
For those of you doing the Cold War, the report to Reagan from teams of 'Doves' and 'Hawks' on the situation regarding detente in 1985 would be another possible activity: 1.2 Theme 1 - Rivalry, Mistrust and Accord (ATL).
Zoom breakout rooms: some help in setting up
First, go to settings on Zoom and make sure you have enabled Breakout rooms to be used.
Then go to your Zoom main page. You should see the option for Breakout rooms in the icon bar at the bottom of the screen. In this image I've also used the 'screenshare' function to put up the debate the students will be working on.
When you click on 'Breakout Rooms', it will give you a new screen, asking you to choose how many rooms you would like. You can either assign students randomly to a breakout room - or you can assign them manually. You cannot, however, manually assign students to groups until they have entered the meeting.
Once the rooms are created, go to the options menu. You can make it that students are required to stay in the rooms for a fixed amount of time (20 - 25 minutes is probably the maximum time you would want) or they can pop back into the main session to ask questions. If you are going to check on the rooms, then you may want to untick the "allow participants to return to the main session. If you want them to receive a warning when time is up, you can set that in the final "countdown" option.
It is important that students are clear on instructions for the task before they move into the breakout rooms; one idea is to put the instructions for students in the chat so that they can take a photo of them before they are assigned to the rooms. Once in the rooms you can also broadcast messages to all the rooms at once.
Other options for breakout rooms
Google: Here's a video about setting up Breakout Rooms in Google.
MS Teams uses channels for these rooms. When creating a channel you have two choices. You can create them with the privacy set to standard. This means that students can choose to join the meeting and the work done by the student is accessible to everyone in your course. If you choose standard, you just tell your students which channel to join. You can also choose to make the channel private and assign students to a channel in which only the students that you assign to that channel have access to the group. Once you choose the private channel option and click ok the menu appears and you add members.