For instructors
A debate kit foryour classroom
Every student wants something they can't get yet: a grade, an internship, a first job. This kit teaches them to argue for it, starting with fifteen minutes of one class.
The exercise
Fifteen minutes, start to finish
A room, a clock, and one thing worth disagreeing about.
Read out one claim
1 minSomething people actually disagree about. "Streaming ruined music," or a line from this week's reading. Ask who wants the first minute.
One student argues it
1 minA rough case beats a polished one here. They say it out loud, they stand behind it, the minute ends.
Everyone answers the person before them
30 secThirty seconds each, around the room. They answer the person right before them, which is what turns a row of speeches into a conversation.
Say what worked
2 minName one student and say exactly what they did well: answered the real question, landed a sharp comeback, changed their mind out loud. That is the whole close.
Put the nervous ones on a team
Three students share a position. One opens, one answers questions, one closes. Everybody speaks and everybody has cover.
Start with music, food, movies
They already have opinions on those, so the first round costs them no homework. Once the room is warm, run the same shape on the reading.
What a good day looks like
A warmer room, and five or six students asking when you are doing it again. Out of thirty, that is a win.
How the room stays civil
Everyone gets a fair shot
Speaking up in front of the class is the scary part. Three rules carry that weight, and they are why this lands with a room of beginners.
Attack the argument
You go after the claim itself. A student can lose the argument and walk out with their standing intact, which is why this works on people doing it for the first time.
Same clock, both sides
Sixty seconds is sixty seconds for both speakers. The timer enforces it, not you, so nobody can talk over the clock or hide behind it.
Argue a side you might not hold
Assign positions by coin flip and the whole thing loosens up. Students defend a case they can drop at the end, so their ego stays out of it.
We run this with adults in bars and bookshops, where anyone can walk out at any moment. They stay, and these three rules are the reason.
A SuperDebate game
Draw
Same idea as the exercise, played like a card game. Two students get three topics. Each crosses one out. Whatever survives is the debate.
The cut is what gets shy students playing. They had a hand in choosing the topic, so they walk in owning it.
- Ethics
White lies make the world worse, not better
- Work
Open offices were the worst workplace experiment of the century
- Food
Pineapple belongs on pizza
Free for your students
An AI that argues back
Students defend a position against an AI that pushes back, then get scored on where the argument was thin. It works on anything they have to make a case for. A paper, a presentation, an interview answer.
Free with a free account, in the browser, on a phone or a laptop. Worth sending to your class on its own, whether or not you run the exercise.
Still early and still improving. Two coaches who train national champions are reviewing it now.
Example session
Should employers be allowed to monitor staff computers?
You
Monitoring is fine. The computers belong to the company, so what happens on them is the company's business.
Coach
Owning the laptop settles who bought it, not what you may do with what it records. Does buying a desk let you read a diary left in it?
You
Fair. Then narrow it: monitoring is fine if you say so up front and keep it to work systems.
Your scorecard
20/30
- Argument quality4
- Refutation3
- Delivery4
- Organization4
- Persuasiveness3
- Evidence & research2
What they take with them
The skill outlives the class
Thirty seconds of answering the person in front of you is the same move as every one of these.
The interview
Answering the question you were actually asked, without rambling.
Asking for more money
Making the case, and holding it when someone pushes back.
The pitch
Knowing the strongest objection before it arrives, because you argued the other side.
A room that disagrees with you
Staying useful in a hard conversation instead of going quiet or going hot.
Why now
AI can write their essays.It can't argue for them.
Every take-home assignment now competes with a model that writes well. A live debate is the assessment that still works: a student defending a position in front of the room, against real pushback, shows you exactly what they know.
John Hines coaches championship debaters and researches debate and AI. He makes this case better than we do.
SuperDebate podcast · Why debate is the most important skill in the age of AI
See it for yourself
Watch a real SuperDebate
Show your class what the format looks like before you run it.
Getting started
Run it once
If the room lights up, send them the training and run it again next month.
This is the same warm up we use at our own debate nights. Try the training yourself first, so you know exactly what your class is walking into.
Want a hand with the first one? Email john@superdebate.org and I will help you plan it around your material.