Big Voice: Debate like a Pro
Learn from the world's best competitive debaters how to make powerful arguments, propose compelling policies and speak with conviction.
Big Voice is the world's first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) dedicated to teaching the skills of debating. Our teachers are some of the world's most successful competitive debaters, including three winners of the World Universities Debating Championships.
What is Big Voice?
About the Course
Big Voice is an online course devoted to teaching the skills and knowledge required to excel at debating.
The course has been developed by a group of former university debaters including three winners of the World Universities Debating Championships. We wanted to share our techniques for improving public speaking and argumentation skills.
Course Syllabus
Lesson 1: Introduction to Policy Debates
Lesson 2: Arguments
Lesson 3: Big Ideas I: Ethics
Lesson 4: Big Ideas II: Individual Freedom and the State
Lesson 5: Big Ideas III: International Relations
Lesson 6: Big Ideas IV: Economics & Development
Lesson 7: Taking Charge of Your Debating
The Method We Use
The method we use in this course is the one that we used to learn debating ourselves. We call it learning from first principles. We start the course by examining how to approach debates about public policy – how to identify the problem with the way the world works now and defend a solution to that problem. We then cover how to make an effective argument and how to rebut one. Then we teach you how to debate about the Big Ideas in the realm of ethics, individual freedoms, international relations and economics. By the end of this course, you will be able to come up with effective arguments on a wide range of interesting issues.
Big Voice is interactive! Each lesson is divided into a series of videos, with fun exercises after each video and tips on what you can do to improve your debating in the future.
The course runs on the Stile platform, which is easy to use wherever you're from. All you need to take this course is an Internet connection.
Recommended Background
This course is for university and high school students who have had limited exposure to debating – or, indeed, anyone who is interested. No special background is required other than knowledge of English.
To access Big Voice
Enter the invitation code: ysf5h6
Fill in your email address and follow the prompts