I Like Fighting With My Friends
Why the debate format is exactly what education publishing needs
Second Draft Labs: #0021
We publish the best ideas in AI and education, from the people doing the work.
I don’t think I would be talking out of turn to say that Susan Ray , Doan Winkel , Jason Gulya, and Patrick Dempsey have deep respect and admiration for each other’s work.
Theirs are the posts that always tend to appear first in my feed. And theirs are the ideas I am always most excited to learn from.
There’s a sense, I think, that a lot of folks like us—who are sharing our work in this space of AI & education—are often grouped together as the “AI people on LinkedIn.”
Of course, if you know our work, you know we all have wildly different styles. And we also have significantly different areas of focus in our writing.
Which is why I love the format for Transparency & Reflection: Navigating Student + AI Work in Higher Education so much.
I know I don’t have to ask this, because you already have, but since we’re here . . .
Have you pre-ordered your copy yet?
If not, it’s not too late. Order Transparency & Reflection now!
Our volume intentionally brings together four people who are thinking deeply about the same problem space, but who see the solution very differently, argue for their perspectives in wildly different styles, and make entirely different kinds of appeals.
Besides the differences in ideas, styles, and approaches, I see the collaborative debate format working so well for a few reasons.
Building Better Arguments
The first reason this collaborative debate format works so well is that, knowing your ideas will be critiqued, you have to spend much more time developing and tightening your arguments.
The last thing any chapter wants is for someone to be able to easily criticize it because of some obvious omission or logical misstep.
Knowing that your perspective will be critically evaluated and knowing that you will also be doing your own critical evaluation forces you to do a ton of perspective taking—and thus heavy editing—along the way.
How would Jason likely respond to this idea? How might Susan’s approach undercut my suggestion here? What rebuttal is Doan going to present that makes this point seem less certain?
To me, this ends up creating a much stronger presentation of ideas than if they had been written in a format that was—as with most formats—entirely uncontested.
Ultimately, as you write in this format, you aren’t just asking if the argument makes sense? You’re asking whether it will still make sense after three super-smart people who see the problem differently actively try to spotlight every hole in it!
Our Best Guesses
Which brings me to the second benefit of writing in this collaborative debate format.
In particular, as we’re exploring AI and education, all of these ideas are still works in progress. All of these ideas are hypotheses. This is all pilots.
Of course, we’re backing up our ideas, with experience, with research, and our best understanding of how students learn. But still, it’s all our best guesses.
Unlike presenting these ideas as complete thoughts robust enough to support an entire manuscript, writing alongside other ideas-in-progress lowers the burden of plausibility each idea is forced to carry.
Not only does this collaborative debate approach distribute the weight of credibility across four different arguments, but it also gives the contributors space—in their responses to the other chapters—to further flesh out parts of their own approaches that they might have overlooked when they first presented their chapters.
So, you are literally reading the development of thought in real-time (as far as it goes).
Ultimately, then, as a whole, the book is able to provide so much more value because it isn’t offering just one final solution and trying to justify it across 150 pages.
It is offering four different perspectives that are specifically intended to be read next to each other.
And more than even just offering four perspectives, it is presenting twelve different views on those approaches through the responses to each chapter by the contributors!
So, what you end up with is a much more developed—even if more contested—framework for understanding how you, as a practitioner, might apply the ideas we are exploring.
Best Motives
And finally, if not most importantly, the collaborative debate format shows that dialogue, and discussion, and differing viewpoints are good! It shows that we can learn from other people’s ideas even if we don’t agree with them.
Shocking, I know!
The format, as presented to the contributors, forced us to consider the best motives behind the approaches of the others, even though we didn’t agree with them.
As we wrote our responses, we weren’t necessarily looking at each other’s perspectives with the goal of showing how ridiculous it was. Quite the opposite.
We were looking at the chapters as potential approaches in this shared problem space—as approaches that we could understand as offering something useful, but also concerned that they overlooked certain things we believed deserved more or less emphasis or a different kind of focus.
We were essentially looking at each other’s arguments and trying to find the best version of them to help the readers identify what was worth keeping and what might need some refinement.
The Curriculum?
Ultimately, in this format, the four of us were writing next to people whose ideas—I think we would all agree—we hope others adopt, even if they choose someone else’s perspective over our own.
And I think this sort of approach is important well beyond the confines of this topic.
This sort of perspective-taking, and suspension of judgment, and willingness to take seriously perspectives that you might not completely agree with seems like it could be the entire curriculum of school itself.
Even if not, I hope you get as much value from reading this volume as we did from writing it.
Now, pre-order the book now!
Thank you!
-Patrick
P.S. Extra special shout-out to Adam Pacton for teeing the book up with a challenging and inspiring introduction!