The purpose of this DCI program is to create opportunities for students in diverse classroom settings to productively engage with one another on difficult issues on which they may disagree.
It supports faculty members interested in incorporating deliberation into their classes by organizing workshops, hosting discussion groups, and publicizing deliberation-involved courses.
The overview document for this program, Deliberation Across the Curriculum, describes the rationale behind classroom deliberation, explores the connections between discussion, deliberation, and the liberal arts, and maps out how a deliberative process might play out in a curricular setting.
The DCI has also developed a companion document, DCI Pathways to Deliberation in the Classroom, that further explores why deliberation is relevant to courses across the liberal arts curriculum. It identifies three specific ways faculty can incorporate deliberation into their courses — by adding “deliberation modules” to existing syllabi, by developing “deliberation-involved courses,” or by creating “deliberation-focused courses.” The DCI is available to help faculty implement any of these options.
The Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Collaborative
Additionally, the DCI has launched the Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Collaborative, a community of faculty members dedicated to learning about and utilizing innovative ways that foster productive deliberation in their courses.
Over the course of the 2021-22, 2022-23, 2023-24, and 2024-25 academic years, over 60 faculty members from 28 different higher education institutions participated in the Collaborative. They included junior and senior faculty from the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences; they came from community colleges, liberal arts colleges, and public and private universities, and historically black colleges and universities. A grant from the Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) enabled faculty from ACS institutions, including Davidson, Furman, Morehouse, Rollins, Spelman, and Southwestern, to join the first two cohorts of the Collaborative. These faculty members met together throughout the year as they learned about deliberative pedagogy strategies and integrated them into their syllabi. They then reflected on their experiences in a series of blog posts on the DCI website — check them out here.
With the generous support of the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the DCI hosted the Collaborative for a third and fourth year. The 2023-24 cohort includes 22 faculty members from 13 different institutions, while the 2024-25 cohort includes 18 faculty members from 15 different institutions. These cohorts launch their year together with an in-person orientation workshop in August, and then develop and teach their own deliberation-involved courses over the course of their year as a DeeP faculty fellow.
DeeP-Collaborative-2024-PosterThe document below provides more information about the Collaborative experience. Through the support of the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), the DCI will host a fifth year of the DeeP Collaborative in 2026-27. Two faculty members from each institution that has been accepted to join the Deliberative Citizenship Network (DCN) will join the Collaborative. To learn more about the DCN and how your institution can apply, visit here. Any faculty member who wishes to enhance their ability to embed more deliberation about questions and issues involving important disagreements in their classes should encourage their institutions to join the DCN.
DeeP-Collaborative-Invitation-2026-27Sign-up below for updates on upcoming opportunities to learn more about incorporating deliberation in the classroom. If you have any questions, please email dci@davidson.edu.
If you would like to learn more about the DCI’s Deliberation on Campus Program, click here.
