Debating the Issues and Finding a Middle Ground

Contemporary political discourse often presents controversial policy topics (e.g., public lands, climate change, and immigration) in a bimodal manner - either for or against. As a result, can our classrooms provide a space for students to learn how to construct solutions that broker various perspectives? For students to reconcile policy differences, I designed a series of debate panels across a semester. The focus of this article is to describe the details of the debate panels so they can be replicated in educational settings. Moreover, the debate panels embody active or experiential learning for students to become informed participants of US public-policy making.