The purpose of this handout to help you and members of your debate team subdivide your topic and allocate research assignments to team members. Each person is expected to do individual research. You will report that research in an annotated bibliography due to be handed in just before the debates in class begin.

Organizing Debates Research

1. Be clear about the distinction between an opinion (not what you want to be giving) and an argument (what you want to be developing).

Arguments are logical positions that can be objectively argued and that, at least in principle, can be tested by data.

You don't have to believe an argument to present effectively what someone holding that point of view would say

Usually arguments have counter-arguments. You want to think out what are the best logical claims and the best data supporting the counter view. Presumably, those will be presented by your debate oponents, so you want to be ready.

2. For each debate topics, there are several important subarguments. One of the most important parts of this assignment is for you and your team members to figure out what these are.

Often these subarguments involve different disciplines---one may involve biological data, a second may involve the state of the law, a third may involve sociological issues, a fourth may involve some ethical complexities, and a fifth may involve political and social policy issues.

Some of these subarguments are more supportive of your debate position than are others. The ones that are not supportive of your position are among the counter-arguments that you must recognize and take into account. You need to research these as well as those that support your position.

You should divide up responsibility among your team members for researching the sub-arguments. Everyone should have different research responsibilities, and you need to be clear about what these assignments are and who is doing what. Findings provided by each person should be shared with those representing the team in different parts of the debate when you argue your case before the class.

This means that your first job, personally and as a team, is to find the subarguments for your topic and to assign them to team members. Preliminary library research can help with this. Some groups simply assign general areas to members (one person does the biology, another law, and so on.) It is important, however, that you work together to articulate the actual issues that need to be explored so that you understand how your topic can be broken down.

Teaching assistant Caytie Decker will be contacting each team, arranging meetings, and helping you with these topic breakdowns.

Your writing assignments for the debates portion of this course is to prepare an annotated bibliography of the materials you discover, read, and use to form your arguments. You are required to do library research and to use sources that represent a variety of levels of sophistication and technical detail. We will give more information later about the detailed expectations we have for your annotated bibliographies. For now, be careful to keep records of the full citations of things you read and take brief notes about the contents of a book or article and about why the material is relevant for your debate argument.