The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Faculty Collaborative consists of faculty from Davidson College and other higher education institutions who are committed to learning and implementing new ways to improve and deepen the quality of their class discussions. These faculty come from a wide array of disciplines and backgrounds to study and discuss deliberative pedagogy methods, share their ideas and questions with one another, and work to embed deliberation in their classrooms. In this special blog series, members of the Collaborative describe and reflect on their experiences developing and teaching their deliberation-involved courses.
By Keith Graves (2023-24 Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative Faculty Fellow)
A Little Background
Alamance Community College is one of the 58 Community Colleges in the North Carolina Community System. The College is located in Graham, NC, and currently has an enrollment of 5,222 students. At Alamance Community College, generally the degree program of study in Business Administration is sixty-eight credit hours for completion, and approximately 30% of the students are in high school, with the balance being students who are experiencing college for the first or second time in their lives and can vary in age from 18-45 years. Most are women, approximately 70%, and most of the students, close to 100% work part-time or full-time, and an estimate of approximately 50% have families with children!
There is a 100% acceptance rate for students that apply to the college and the college has a current student population of 5,222, with 150 studying Business Administration in the curriculum or college transfer programs. Students in the Business Administration Program must complete 67 credit hours to receive their Associate’s degree and be eligible to transfer to a four-year college for the completion of their bachelor’s degree.
I am a professor in the Business Administration Department and teach a series of courses that includes 100 Level Courses Introduction to Business, Principles of Management, Business Law, and 200 Level Courses Organizational Behavior, Business Ethics, and International Business. Of the six courses I teach, generally 5 are online with 1 on-campus.
Having taught Principles of Management at two community colleges, I noted that the students in this course tended to be more mature, in age and life experiences…and thus I decided to ‘try’ the deliberative process in this course as my sense was that this student population would engage in the deliberation directly and broadly as a function of a discussion forum. After some review of current topics, related to the news and subjects that have an implication or tie into business, and could be considered ‘controversial,’ I decided to have a deliberation on the subject of the Value of War.
Why the Value of War? The course I selected to facilitate the deliberation was Business 137 (Principles of Management) as I felt that this course, with its objectives of presenting the basic but broad overview of the principles, strategies, and roles of organizational managers would be the best opportunity to facilitate a deliberative discussion forum on a subject that is controversial and presents the best opportunity for learning and engagement. Plus, I had 2 sections of this course with 37 students.
Both sections were to be offered online, so I decided to experiment with an asynchronous deliberative process through the exchange of ideas, perspectives, and arguments through a series of written discussion forums. Students would submit their responses to a general question on the topic, and then respond in writing to their classmate’s submissions.
Typically, although admittedly without any rigorous data, I have found that many or most of my business students do not pay attention to the news and have little awareness of the current conflicts and more specifically the ones that are supported by the United States as a matter of our foreign policy. Conflicts such as Israel and Hamas, the potential that China may invade Taiwan, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for example.
The ever-expanding American military footprint covers nearly every continent. While the United States has long had a military presence in other nations, the scope significantly expanded following the passage of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which, in the wake of 9/11, permitted the support of foreign forces against various terrorist groups. The U.S. has since had 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries as of 2020 and currently maintains at least 750 foreign military bases across 80 countries, according to the Conflict Management and Peace Science journal.
As the top military power in the world, according to the Global Firepower Index, the U.S. has a vested interest in the national security of countries across the globe. In situations that do not warrant combative military intervention or would threaten relations with allies, the government may oversee or aid more minor disputes within countries, such as counterterrorism efforts. This type of involvement is known as a “shadow war,” a somewhat covert military operation conducted on behalf of and at the invitation of a smaller power.
Ok, now you know that the US is involved in a number of conflicts around the world, but the question remains where do the weapons come from, who manufactures them, how are they developed as a product, are these US companies, do they employ US workers, where are they located, and how do these companies fit within the Military Industrial Complex? These are some of the questions that I wanted students in the class to think about and grapple with, together.
Learning Prep Introduction
In structuring the intent and the learning outcomes of the exercise, I developed a set of learning competencies for the students with the expectation that all would participate in the online deliberative discussion forum, and they were:
- Learning to engage with the subject, as facilitated by the discussion forum questions.
- Developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills that will cause them to think about the problem and move into non-traditional thinking about how to solve the issue.
- Being intellectually curious
- Utilizing data for critical decision making
- Developing the ability to see issues as part of a broad system and as such think about the implications of that system in the development of resolutions.
I also aimed to broaden the thinking of the students beyond their current perspective of the value (or complete lack of value) of war by learning about the implications of war on a national economy and to think about the critical question – who benefits from war?
With that goal in mind, I intended to introduce and set the tone for the deliberative process by providing some initial opportunities for the students to learn about the practice and consequences of war. For example, I provided background textual material, a lecture about the ‘Military Industrial Complex,’ articles such as the “Cost of War” and the book, “The Business of War,” for them to have as reading and learning materials during week 3 of the 16 week course.
Teaching/Deliberation Strategy for the Online Learning Environment
I prepared the class for the non-traditional ‘deliberation’ portion of the class by providing them with (1) a lecture and reading on the subject of deliberation, (2) critical reading materials, and (3) the schedule for three deliberations in the course. I also let them know there would be a reflection assignment about the deliberations as well.
The first Discussion Forum focused on the question, “What Do You See as the Value of War?” The second and third Discussion Forums encouraged the students to take a look at what others in the class had written – to read and reflect on their words, particularly those who were opposed to their own point of view. They were asked to consider whether those perspectives challenged them to potentially change their thinking, and if so what impacted their thinking, why, and what did they learn from the viewpoints of others?
In Week 15, the students were asked to write a ‘Reflections’ paper on the learning from the deliberation exercise. The paper was expected to be 2-3 pages and the student was to document at least 3 key learnings from the process. As in all steps, the instructor has the responsibility to monitor, grade and provide feedback to the student. What I noticed in my reading of the summaries was that a majority of the students were impacted in the process in that they ‘changed’ their initial views and understood that from a business perspective that war has and can have an impact on a national economy, and that in itself might have some positive implications.
Summary
As a summary, each student who participated in the Deliberation was asked to provide feedback on the process and the facilitation of the deliberative discussions. Here are a few examples:
“The one thing I learned in the deliberative process is to first listen, deliberate, and then articulate. Most subjects or topics have a way of striking a nerve and sometimes we just jump to speak our minds…I understand that business can profit from war and business will do what needs to be done to survive in today’s economy. They are in business to make money after all but in the end losing just 1 life is too many and we have lost hundreds of thousands of lives to wars. I do think that this type of forum has value because it has gotten the students to engage in the process and understand what factors influence the economy.”
“I would say that my knowledge of the deliberative process in business was helpful but my ability to be objective, which has come in handy for several classes over the semesters…helped me more when it came to considering controversial topics and then discussing them.”
“I did not change my mind throughout the course of the forum’s entirety, but it was interesting to see other people’s reasoning as to their own views on the subject matter and question them as to why they thought in such a way.”
“The process of deliberation was incorporated into the flow of this course with the intent of establishing an additional pedagogical methodology of learning…and through the use of the discussion forums and a controversial question that focused on the value of war….and with the intent of getting business students to understand the value of war, rather than the sociological consequences….my sense is that the deliberation facilitated a level of learning that was not expected and had a very positive effect on the students abilities and to develop the course competencies, (1) critical thinking and problem solving, (2) analytical reasoning, (3) learning to engage in controversial subjects, (4) being intellectually curious, and (5) learning how to view and solve critical issues as part of a system!”
