The Experience of Organizing the First Italian Youth Debating Championship
10.3280/exioa2-2021oa13022
We present here a report about the first Italian Youth Debating Championship (IYDC, Campionato Italiano Giovanile di Debate 2021) from an organizational and management perspective. We show the complexity of the event’s implementation and the importance of managing information and communication technologies. We underscore that not only have the participants recognized that the IYDC is a powerful method to improve participants’ soft skills and active citizenship, but the European Commission and the European Parliament have officially as well. While the IYDC would not have been conceivable and viable before the COVID-19 pandemic, as organizers of informal education activities, we are convinced that this innovative educational model presented will continue to spread even after the pandemic ends.
application/pdf
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Matteo Giangrande
Excellence and Innovation in Learning and Teaching - Open Access
Education Platformization
The Experience of Organizing the First Italian Youth Debating Championship
Text.Serial.Journal
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Esperienze e pratiche
2021-12-23
2021-09-17
2021-12-23
2021-12-23
EXIOA
Matteo Giangrande
2021/12/23
10.3280/exioa2-2021oa13022
Società Nazionale Debate Italia
2499-507X
2
Education Platformization
en
Weijers, O. (2013). In search of the truth. A history of disputation techniques from antiquity to early modern times. Turnhout: Brepols.
The Experience of Organizing the First Italian Youth Debating Championship
https://journals.francoangeli.it/index.php/exioa/article/download/13022/1179
6
Esperienze e pratiche

The Experience of Organizing the First Italian
Youth Debating Championship

Matteo Giangrande*


Abstract
We present here a report about the first Italian Youth Debating Championship
(IYDC, Campionato Italiano Giovanile di Debate 2021) from an organizational
and management perspective. We show the complexity of the event’s
implementation and the importance of managing information and
communication technologies. We underscore that not only have the participants
recognized that the IYDC is a powerful method to improve participants’ soft
skills and active citizenship, but the European Commission and the European
Parliament have officially as well. While the IYDC would not have been
conceivable and viable before the COVID-19 pandemic, as organizers of
informal education activities, we are convinced that this innovative educational
model presented will continue to spread even after the pandemic ends.

Keywords: Debate Methodology, Organization of Educational Innovation,
Post-Pandemic Pedagogy, Active Citizenship, Education Platformization

First submission: 17/09/2021; accepted: 20/11/2021
Available online: 23/12/2021

    This paper offers a report on the experience of a project and an innovative
training process in an Italian informal educational context: the first Italian
Youth Debating Championship 2021 (Campionato Italiano Giovanile di Debate
2021).1 While it can be observed from multiple perspectives (pedagogical,
sporting, and sociological), this paper is intended to illustrate its management
and organizational aspects.



* Società Nazionale Debate Italia. E-mail: matteo.giangrande@sn-di.it.
1
  In the Italian-speaking community, the acronym CIGD is used to refer to the Italian
youth debate championship. This paper uses IYDC, as this acronym is formed with the
initials of the tournament name translated into English.

Excellence and Innovation in Learning and Teaching (ISSNe 2499-507X), 2021, 2

Doi: 10.3280/exioa2-2021oa13022




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    In fact, the paper does not intend to illustrate and evaluate the practice’s
effect on improving the skills of the participants in the event. There is solid
evidence in pedagogical research that proves the methodology’s effectiveness
in improving critical thinking, research attitude, teamwork, and communication
skills (Akerman & Neale, 2011).2 Instead, the paper’s goal is only to report the
experience of organizing the debating championship as a process of building an
online learning environment. The hypothesis is that a critical reflection on these
aspects can be significant for the debate movement in Italy in the near future
and, more generally, for innovations in learning and teaching. This paper is
divided into three fundamental sections: the first concerns the design of the
championship; the second, its realization, and the third, its outcomes. These
sections are introduced with a brief account of the stages in Italy’s official
recognition of the teaching methodology of debate and the COVID-19
pandemic’s effect on it. Finally, the conclusion offers reflections on the
experience and its management process.


1. The official recognition in Italy of the debate as a teaching
   methodology

   Snider (1984, 2003), one of the most authoritative scholars of the
methodology of teaching debating, argued that the academic debate should be
conceptualized as a decision-making role-playing game. The “gaming
paradigm” has achieved wide consensus among scholars of debate (Strait &
Wallace, 2008), and we have defended it by discussing its rules (Giangrande,
2019a, pp. 5-14) and by arguing that it should be considered a mental sport
(Giangrande, 2019b). Therefore, in this report, when we use the term debate,
we mean a role-playing game between two teams whose purpose is to argue
better than the other for or against an assigned thesis in the context of a rule-
based discussion.
   If we consider the history of education in Italy after unification,3 then it can
be said with certainty that the history of the debate in Italy begins in the second
2
  For a critical perspective on the debate methodology, see also Johnson and Johnson
(1985).
3
  It is probable that disputatio as a teaching method survived in the practice of teaching
philosophy in high schools in Italy at least until the mid-19th century. This is the only
explanation I can give for the presence of extensive descriptions of different forms of
disputation as a didactic methodology within Johann von Lichtenfels’s philosophy
handbook “for use in secondary schools” (Milan, 1845), by Baldassarre Poli (Padua,
1844), by Giambattista Peyretti (Turin, 1856), and by Pier Antonio Corte (Turin, 1862).
However, to my knowledge, the subject has not been investigated at all. The only work

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half of the first decade of the new millennium. Generally, despite the fact that,
beginning in the 1970s, debating began to become a mental sport that spread in
schools and universities globally, Italy, like France and other countries in
Mediterranean Europe, has no tradition in debating.4
    Unlike the American scenario (Bartanen, 2014), the absence of a cultural
tradition of “Speech and Debate” could slow the growth of the debate
movement in Italy. However, even if this were true, its effects are not visible.
In fact, let us consider the main stages of the short history of the debate in Italy
from a managerial and organizational perspective.
    First: in 2013, the school network of “WeDebate” was established. Through
the vision of Prof. Benedetto Di Rienzo, a school director and a strong supporter
of the educational potential of debating in students’ future lives, six Lombard
schools constituted the first nucleus of a network that today includes more than
180 schools in all regions of Italy. More importantly, this growth has been
increasingly widespread to date.5
    Second: in 2014, the “Avanguardie Educative” schools’ movement,
powered by INDIRE, the National Institute of Documentation, Innovation and
Educational Research, which is intended by statute to innovate teaching and
learning, adopted a debate methodology (Cinganotto, Mosa, & Panzavolta,
2021).
    Third: on 2016, the Italian Ministry of Education planned and financed a
project “DebateItalia” to train teachers and students the method of debating on
a national scale. This led to the organization of the first “Debate Olympics” in
the following year. The winning team represented Italy at the World
Universities Debating Championship.
    Fourth: in 2019, during the second edition of the “Debate Olympics,” the
Italian Debate Society (Società Nazionale Debate Italia, SNDI) was established
to disseminate the practice of debate in civil society, and in 2020, it was
recognized as a member of the International Debating Education Association
(IDEA). Among its many current activities, it coaches the team that represents
Italy at the World Schools Debating Championship. The Italian Debate Society,
chaired by Prof. Manuele De Conti, has more than a thousand members from

to my knowledge that describes the history of the evolution from disputatio to debate
as we know it today within North American educational institutions is Potter (1944).
The spread of “positivist” culture in the sciences is the primary historical reason that
explains the decline of disputation as a teaching and research practice in European
universities since the mid-19th century. For a history of disputation, see Weijers (2013).
4
  We could present much evidence to support this fact but will simply point out that no
Italian team has ever participated in the World Universities Debating Championship.
5
  Information on the structure and purpose of the “WeDebate” school network can be
found on https://www.debateitalia.it/pagine/wedebate.

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all Italian regions. It also promotes research works and teaching materials in
Italian on the debate (De Conti & Giangrande, 2018; De Conti & Zompetti,
2019; Giangrande, 2019a; Andrič, Bartanen, Frank, Llano & Zompetti, 2021).
    Similar to literally all human activities worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic
and the physical distancing measures governments adopted in March 2020 to
combat it have influenced the developmental trajectory of the debate movement
in Italy profoundly.
    Prior to the pandemic, we were accustomed to the idea that to engage in
debate, the participants had to meet physically, which for groups of teams of
debaters meant agreeing on a meeting time and canceling other dates and
meetings, but also having a physical space available in which to meet, often
after significantly expensive long-distance journeys.
    However, no one could meet physically during the lockdown. Did this also
indicate that it was impossible to debate? In fact, we found that it was not. Many
teachers have found that debates, both in the classroom and in extracurricular
and competitive settings, have maintained “ethical proximity” in faceless
(masked or online) classrooms, despite the physical distancing and stress this
has caused students and teachers (Dickman, 2021). During the physical
distancing period, our classrooms were less socially distant than they might
have been not despite, but precisely by virtue of, onlife (Floridi, 2014). This has
cushioned the difficulty of adolescents living in isolation.
    In response to the pandemic, the Italian debate community Prof. Giovanna
Colombo led organized the third edition of the “Debate Olympics” in April
2020, which was the first online debate tournament in Europe during the
pandemic. In doing so, they discovered that it could be done.
    Rief (2021) noted that the intercollegiate debate is one of the few academic
activities that can be conducted virtually well and that the technological
solutions numerous debate communities have adopted to continue their
activities raise questions about the necessary and sufficient conditions of
valuable (rather than mere) participation in events. In the concluding remarks,
we comment on this theme briefly by associating it with the trend toward using
a platformization of education that challenges traditional educational
institutions.


2. Project design for the Italian Youth Debating Championship
   (IYDC)

   The entire Italian debate community found that organizing a complex event,
such as the final phase of a national debate tournament, in the online mode in
April 2020 was an unprecedented challenge. Every organizational and

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managerial aspect of debating online was analyzed and planned, as this was the
first online debate tournament in Europe since the beginning of the pandemic.
The fact that everything went well made everyone involved realize that the
online mode of debating was not only a “surrogate” for the face-to-face mode
but could be better in some respects.
    Obviously, the worldwide debate community preferred online debating to
doing nothing, and rules and procedures for the “e-debates” began to be
developed.6 The competitions at academic sites, usually held with hundreds of
debaters and coaches in attendance, turned into massive online classrooms.
After long and sophisticated internal reflection, the debating world
championships were held on Zoom.
    The members of the Italian debate community also reflected on the “face-
to-face vs. face-to-screen” issue. The discussion was characterized by the fact
that they thought about a post-pandemic scenario immediately. It was assumed
that the “e-debate” would not be simply a “surrogate” for the “real” debate, as
online debating was so real and as worthy as debating face-to-face.
    It is nearly trivial to list the advantages and disadvantages of online meetings
v. those face-to-face. The primary clash appears to be between the ease of
access the online mode offers (lower costs, less travel, and more flexibility) and
the quality of communication and interpersonal relationships that the face-to-
face mode appears to provide. It would be futile to deny that, from an
organizational point of view, the online mode reduces some costs (travel, food,
and accommodations) drastically. Further, the organizers are well aware that
the affordability and ease of participating in an online event increases the
expectations that must be met to motivate the users to participate in a face-to-
face event.
    The organizers of debating activities in Italy are aware of all of this and are
also aware that the smaller the budget that public or private institutions need to
invest in debate education, the greater the strength of the economic reasons in
favor of online, rather than face-to-face, events. In any case, their approach to
addressing this question has been primarily educational and not economic.
    A national face-to-face debate tournament has the peculiarity that it cannot
be repeated several times during the year without interfering heavily with the
debaters, coaches, and judges’ other activities. Although everyone knows that
only the constant and repeated practice of certain exercises allows particular
skills to be refined, conducting a national debate tournament face-to-face
several times during the year would also require budgets and time that no Italian
institution or organization appears to be willing or able to provide.

6
  IDEA, Online debating review and lessons learned, available at https://www.sn-
di.it/debate-online-valutazione-critica-e-indicazioni-per-il-futuro/.

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    It is also true that the quality of communication and interpersonal
relationships in online meetings decreases largely depending upon the number
of participants. Frankly, it is not researchers’ job to undertake the
phenomenology of online sociality. However, this report is not alone in
attesting that we can all empathically perceive others and their experiences in
certain online situations, because the “lived body” can enter online space and
is available to others there empathetically (Osler, 2021). Debate meetings
between small groups (six to eight students) satisfy the conditions for an
empathic experience. We all agree that the debaters’ socio-emotional
experience in a large real tournament cannot be replaced with that experienced
in a large virtual tournament. However, this may be less true for individual
debate meetings.
    By virtue of these reasons, we are all convinced that, with the pandemic
underway, it would have optimized our educational desiderata not only in the
organization of a single large tournament7 to be carried out online of necessity,8
but also in a series of online debate meetings at constant intervals throughout
the school year between as many teams as possible from all Italian regions. We
have called this second option “Championship” (Campionato in Italian). As we
wanted to embrace the youth population beyond the scholastic framework and
timetable (and officialism), we qualified it with “Youth.”
    Clarification. In defense of online debating, the argument for the online
mode’s equal effectiveness at a lower cost for “small groups” will continue to
hold true even after the pandemic. It is possible that the online mode with small
groups could be a focal point from which educational innovation will move in
the near future. It is not difficult to hypothesize, as happened with the gig-
economy, the development of platforms able to gather, organize, arrange, and,
of course, monetize the myriad of meetings between “small groups” flexibly
for educational purposes.9
    The design of the Italian Youth Debating Championship derived from the
conviction that the greater the constancy in practicing debate matches, the
greater the educational benefits.
 This basic idea led the organizers to structure the championship in three
    phases: a preliminary five-team groups stage (the move to the next stage for



7
  In fact, the fourth edition of the “Debate Olympics” took place anyway.
8
  It was easy to predict in the summer of 2020 that the pandemic would have multiple
waves.
9
   The trend in online studio-rooms, promoted on Facebook, Tik Tok, LinkedIn,
YouTube, and Slack, is just an epiphenomenon of this ongoing process that the
pandemic has only accelerated.

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   the top three in each group), a single-group central phase with four rounds,
   and a knockout phase beginning from round 9.
 Each team can have up to six debaters and two coaches.
 The only limit to the number of teams participating is the availability of
   judges.
 All debate motions up to the third round of the singles round would be
   impromptu motions.
 The debate matches would take place every three weeks throughout the
   school year. The dates and times of the debate were agreed between teams
   and assigned judges through a system to match everyone’s preferences. We
   called this phase “consultation” (concertazione), which the online classroom
   tutor managed. The tutor also managed recording the debates and uploading
   them to YouTube. These organizational choices were dictated by responding
   to the main challenge of keeping everyone’s motivation high throughout the
   year.
   The organizing bodies of the championship were the Organizing Committee,
headed by Prof. Marco Costigliolo; the Judges Council, whose chief is Prof.
Diana Collu; the Ethics Committee; the Motions Commission; the online
classroom tutor group, and the social media communications team. All
members of the organizational staff and all 120 judges gave their
professionalism, commitment, and time absolutely voluntarily and freely.10.
However, it is an example of the community of educators and pupils’ robust
resilience to the effects of the pandemic, as well as their desire to keep alive a
network of relationships and activities that has prevailed over all other
motivations.


3. Implementation of the IYDC 2021

   Here, we characterize the context and motivations that inspired the design
of the IYDC 2021. The championship was the largest and longest debate
tournament ever organized in Italy. The numbers are impressive: 76 teams, 400
debaters (56% women and 44% men), 85 coaches, 120 judges, and 45 online
classroom tutors.11

10
   This is not in itself a note of merit. On the contrary, it highlights an organization’s
point of vulnerability.
11
    All of the results, rankings, motions, and videos of the debates during the
championship are available at https://campionatoitalianodebate.it/stagione-2020-2021/.
The        video       of      the      final     debate        can      be     seen       at
https://campionatoitalianodebate.it/riguarda-il-video-della-finale/.

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    From the organizational perspective, the challenges of this educational event
were the management of the IT infrastructure, communication between the
participating members, and progressive optimization of the system to match
everyone’s preferences. We opted to hold the championship within the Google
educational platform of the Italian Debate Society. Each member had his/her
own profile and email address, and a tutor to whom debaters, coaches and
judges referred to if necessary protected and managed each classroom. The
tutors were the link between the debate matches and the organizational bodies.
    The matching system worked best when the communication latency
between the organization, teams, and judges was reduced. Therefore, on the
organizational side, communications within the championship took place
through two channels: formal via email and informal via messaging. Another
aspect to highlight was the fact that communication was often decentralized.
This choice was based upon the implementation of the principle of
“subsidiarity,” so to speak. Although a centralized and anonymous model was
certainly more efficient, we wanted a member of the organizing staff to be close
by the debate matches, the teams, and the judges, and thus be able to respond
promptly to any needs.
    One of the principal reasons that motivated establishing the Italian Debate
Society was the desire to disseminate the culture and practice of debate
extensively in Italian civil society. The first step in pursuing this goal was to
raise the wider public’s awareness of debate and its political value in a broad
sense. The Championship offered the opportunity to do so.
    Thanks to the sponsorship of Coop Lombardia, one of Italia’s largest
cooperative systems, we developed and implemented a communication plan
with media partners ANSA, the leading wire service in Italy, and Rai Scuola,
an Italian free-to-air television channel that broadcasts cultural and educational
programming. In this way, the Championship and, with it, the debate world,
appeared several times in national newspapers and on television. The
Championship’s website (www.campionatoitalianodebate.it) gradually became
the official channel through which curious viewers saw the Italian debate world.
As a follow-up, we have begun to collect and view matches, teams, and players’
statistics more accurately.
    Because of the pandemic, we have not been able to organize a finale phase
with all of the participants and offices actually present together. This situation
was foreseen, as all of the debate matches were debated online in the final
stages, and each debater was in a separate room. All of these matches were
streamed live and had a relatively large audience of supporters and fans. The
semifinals and finals were particularly surprising. Both Rai Scuola and Ansa
broadcast these matches via live streaming, and a real television studio
managed the streaming.

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    The main organizational innovation of the event was the development of an
increasingly sophisticated, flexible, and immediate system to match the teams
and judges’ preferences. This will allow the supply and demand for debate (or
other educational activities) to be mediated more and more and bypass
bureaucratic, geographical, and time constraints. Compared to pre-pandemic,
this will result in the proliferation of opportunities for students to improve their
soft skills through debate.
    However, we realized only during the implementation process of this
Championship that, in this way, debating as a game was becoming
“platformized”, was becoming a mental sports discipline that was beginning to
spread in public discourse and, in a certain sense, was beginning to be observed.


4. Achievements of the IYDC 2021

    As organizers of educational activities, we believe that this event achieved
its goals. First, the total number of debates was a remarkable 259, which
required more than 800 hours of effort to prepare, debate, and debrief. All of
the testimonials from judges and coaches attested to the students’ strong human
growth and increased skill. The debaters themselves were aware of their growth
and talked about it in some newspaper interviews. Participating in the
championship helped the students strengthen their soft skills, and as organizers,
this outcome more than justified our investment.
    Second, the intense activity had the general effect of improving the entire
Italian debate movement by leveling out certain differences that had been
created over the years. This was true for both debaters and judges and can only
increase the determination to expand future debating activities. Our hope is that
the Italian university system will be able to appreciate the huge patrimony of
debating skills that students develop during their school years. There is a strong
will at the Italian Debate Society to support the organization of debating
activities and competitions at the university level. However, this will not be
sufficient if the Italian university system does not recognize the debate methods
as part of its centuries-old history, its legitimacy as an institution, and as part of
its raison d’être.
    Finally, the first IYDC received the patronage of the European Commission
and the European Parliament for its high educational value in promoting the
next generation’s development of active and aware European citizenship. We
were honored that on the day of the championship finals, which coincided
deliberately with May 9, Europe Day and the launch of the Conference on the
Future of Europe, the European Parliament President, David Sassoli, opened
the finals with a brief speech. This testifies to the European institutions’ support

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for activities such as debating that promote an awareness that European citizens
are prepared for the global challenges that our times have presented to us.
    Ultimately, the IYDC’s achievements can be subsumed under the concept
of recognition. Students and teachers recognized the effect of the debate on
improving soft skills and enhancing personal growth. This recognition has
extended to both families and the school world in general.


5. Concluding remarks

    This paper provided a report on the first IYDC from an organizational and
management perspective. In fact, this report is a testimony.
    We demonstrated that this event would not have been conceivable and
viable before the pandemic. We also illustrated the complexity of its
implementation and the importance of managing information and
communication technologies. Finally, we made this achievement known, as
European institutions have recognized the IYDC officially as a powerful
method to improve soft skills and active citizenship.
    These concluding remarks need to mention the ongoing trend of
platformization of higher education (Tolmayer, 2019). However, this trend
consists not only of the development of university-level, massive open online
courses (MOOCs) or smartphone applications that allow the acquisition of
knowledge through spaced repetition algorithms. This trend also consists of
platforms based upon software matching that allow a myriad of small groups of
students and teachers with similar interests to meet and practice their activities
socially and online. The IYDC was only an epiphenomenon of the ongoing
underground processes and reveals its potential in recruiting and employing
talent if performed at the university level.
    These education platformization trends present a historical challenge for the
future of school, and particularly university, education. This trend is inherent
in the way the technology of the first decade of this millennium has developed.
Regardless of whether we like it or not, as educators, organizers, and managers
of education processes, we all operate within this framework that tends to
platformization. If we exclude the eremitical way of life, we have only
alternative ways of operating within this framework.
    It is reasonable to believe by analogy with what has happened in other
markets that have become platformized, that in the future, transnational private
platforms can satisfy the demand for a quality education even better. This will
certainly depend upon the school and university systems’ social credibility and
on its ability to respond to both the civic and productive needs of the


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contemporary world while maintaining public and general functions and
interest.


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