Team-Based Debate Presentations and Seminar Facilitation

Students will be asked to work in teams (typically comprised of two to three students each) twice over the course of the term: once to participate in an oral in-class debate (including preparation of a written debate brief) and once to provide a written and oral brief to the class regarding one of the seven case studies comprising the final component of the course.

Class Debate Teams

Students will be asked in teams of two (four students per debate) to debate the questions for given dates set out in the lecture/seminar schedule. In doing so, each team (e.g. two students arguing one of the two positions in the debate) should prepare a written brief following the criteria for the individual debate briefs outlined in the 'Assignments' section which, as usual, will be due before the start of class.

Debates will be allocated the final one hour of class time on the assigned dates. The debate format is available on UW-ACE.

Seminar Case-Study Research and Analysis Reports

Students will be assigned to teams of four to produce a case-study research and analysis report to be presented to the class. The presentation will include both a formal written brief (submitted to the instructor) as well as an oral brief in class. In each case, the team will be assigned a case of recent importance in Canadian public administration which raises important questions relating to values and ethics in the public service. Examples include the resignation of Munir Sheik (Chief Statistician, Statistics Canada), the case of Richard Colvin (Canadian diplomat who blew the whistle on Canadian transfers of POWs for torture), and violations of privacy in Veterans Affairs.

The teams are expected to research the case (typically using an online news database) to provide a factual overview of the case as well as to and provide analysis of the ethical and value considerations involved as well as to make some determination of whether the behaviour of various parties invovled in the case was justified.

The team will work together (in consultation with the instructor) to do the following: compose a written brief outlining the most important facts of the case for presentation (before the seminar) to the class as background reading for that date; complete a team-based written analysis of the ethical issues implicated in the case and their collective resolution (if reached) of an ethical judgement of the behaviour of various parties involved in the case (for submission to the instructor); design a presentation format and present the case to class in a manner that contributes to meaningful learning on the part of the class from the case (e.g. debate, role-playing by team members, simulation involving class members, etc.) Each of these elements of the assignment will be undertaken in consultation with the course instructor.

Briefing teams are required to post their facts brief on UW-ACE by Monday at 5:00 for presentations on Wednesday and by Friday at 5:00 for presentations on Monday. Similarly, the presentation format must be similarly provided to the class (with the same due dates) if class participation in presentation (e.g. simluations, etc.) are part of the presentatation. The final written analysis of the ethical issues implicated in the case and their resolution is due one week plus one class date following the class presentation.

Grading

Facts Brief 5%

Ethical Analysis Brief 15% (approx. 1500 words)

Seminar Presentation 5%

Assignment of Dates

At the beginning of the course, students will be asked to identify their top two choices each of debate topic (students may choose the topic but will be assigned to a team as well as debate position). In regard to the seminar case-study reports, students will be assigned to topics and teams by the instructor depending on topic preference and even distribution of students across topics.