Case 3 in the NHSEB case set winds up being largely about interpersonal ethics, but begins with a privacy policy frame. Coach Michael Andersen in Washington shared the below excellent study guide, which recommends the above excellent privacy-related video by Ethics Bowl researcher and advocate Michael Vazquez at UNC. My team discussed the case week before last, then revisited it briefly last week after watching the video – excellent context which helped sharpen their view. Thanks to both Michaels!
Saturday Ethics Bowl Workshop Agenda
I’m excited to share the agenda for this Saturday’s free online Ethics Bowl workshop. There’s also a brief pre-session Friday evening, but Saturday’s the main show. The opening and closing sessions are for everyone, but attendees can choose to follow three themes in between: Ethics Bowl in the Classroom (focused on direct usage for education), Producing the Ethics Bowl (for current or aspiring organizers) or Engaging the World (for those most interested in expanding Ethics Bowl, using it as an outreach vehicle for philosophical ethics and/or a counter to the increasingly debased and violent political culture).
You can see from the details that these will be hosted by Ethics Bowl ALL-STARS. I’ll be in the Engaging the World Zooms, but whichever of these tracks speak to you, definitely take advantage – open to Bowlers on both the high school and collegiate levels, and I’m sure the organizers wouldn’t turn away Ethics Olympiad enthusiasts (same thing) or folks working on the middle school or other levels. One of the sessions is on non-Ethics Bowl variants such as Bioethics Bowl, so I’m sure Ethics Slam enthusiasts and others are welcome as well. Register for free for the Zoom links!
Session 1: 11:30 a.m. to 11:50 a.m. (I assume all these times are EST, New York)
Opening Plenary Facilitated by: Rachel Robison-Greene
The APPE IEB Chair Elect briefly welcomes participants. We will also take a quick look at our webpage to help folks new to Ethics Bowl navigate their way around it.
Session 2: 12:00 p.m. to 12:50 p.m.
Getting Started with Coaching Facilitated by: Greg Wright
In this session we will discuss the most important elements a new coach will want to know such as how to go about preparing for competitions, structuring practices, basic strategies for success, getting team consensus on positions, etc.
Session 3: 1:00 p.m. to 1:50 p.m.
Advanced Coaching Facilitated by: Jeffrey Nielsen
In this session we continue the discussion from Session 1,but with an eye towards more nuanced issues, such as advanced coaching strategies, the distribution of responsibilities in case presentation, recent trends in presentation, ensuring that students aren’t entirely focused on winning, etc.
Session 4: 2:00 p.m. to 2:50 p.m.
4A: Track 1 Session: Ethics Bowl as a Class Facilitated by: Mike Ashfield and Rachel Robison-Greene
It is increasingly common for schools to offer Ethics Bowl classes for credit. In this session, we will discuss ways of engaging in this practice. We will discuss syllabi, assignments, and common challenges associated with running Ethics Bowl as a class.
4B: Track 2 Session: Organizing Ethics Bowls Facilitated by: John Garcia
In this session we will discuss the various elements involved in organizing an ethics bowl such as recruiting and training judges and moderators, scheduling matches, planning for facilities and food, etc.
4C: Track 3 Session: Virtues of the Ethics Bowl Facilitated by: Mark Doorley, Deborah Mower, and Alex Richardson
In this session we ask our esteemed panelists to address questions such as “Why participate in Ethics Bowl?” and “What does Ethics Bowl do for our students?”
Break: 2:50 to 3:30 p.m.
Session 5: 3:30 p.m. to 4:20 p.m.
5A: Track 1 Session: Using Ethics Bowl in the Classroom Facilitated by: Jonathan Spelman and Rachel Robison-Greene
Some faculty members across the country use the Ethics Bowl as a component of their courses. For example, some might use it in a general education ethics class populated by students from a wide range of backgrounds and interest levels. This session will explore strategies one might use to implement Ethics Bowl in such a class.
5B: Track 2 Session: Getting Buy-in Facilitated by: Alan Tomhave
A successful Ethics Bowl program depends on having a lot of support. This session will focus on getting the relevant university administrators, community members, faculty members, and students to support your program.
5C: Track 3 Session: Bioethics Bowl/High School Ethics Bowl/Community Facilitated by: Richard Greene, Leo Kirby, and Jennifer Parks
In this session we hear from folks who have been involved in non-IEB Ethics Bowl and Ethics Bowl adjacent programs about how their programs work and how others can participate.
Session 6: 4:30 p.m. to 5:20 p.m.
6A: Track 1 Session: Community Engagement/Service Learning Facilitated by: Rachel Robison-Greene
There are a range of ways in which faculty across the country engage their students with their respective communities through the Ethics Bowl. In some cases, these methods can help students earn community engaged or service learning credit at their institution. This session will explore ways in which this can be done.
6B: Track 2 Session: Case Writing Facilitated by: James Day
In this session we hear from the chair of the IEB regional case writing committee about what successful case writing involves and ways that those who are interested can become involved in case writing.
6C: Track 3 Session: Ethics Bowl in Challenging Times Facilitated by: John Garcia and Richard Greene
The current political environment poses a variety of challenges for both those who compete in Ethics Bowl and those who organize ethics bowls. We will discuss some of the recent problematic issues and anticipate some worries to come.
Session 7: 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
What Did We Miss? Facilitated by: Richard Greene and Rachel Robison-Greene
Continuing a tradition dating back to the very first Ethics Bowl workshop in 2014, we’ve set aside some time for participants to generate the discussion topics. We encourage folks to consider what they would like to know about the Ethics Bowl that wasn’t discussed in the preceding sessions, and raise those topics in this one.
Free Ethics Bowl Summer Workshop July 25-26
One week from tomorrow, there’s a free online Ethics Bowl workshop for new and experienced coaches, team members and organizers at the collegiate and high school levels. Often, events like this are either college or high school. I’m so glad to see the cross-tier collaboration.
Attendees can follow one of three discussion tracks: Ethics Bowl in the Classroom, Producing the Ethics Bowl or Engaging the World. If you’re busy during the day Friday and Saturday morning, no sweat. Friday the 25th is simply a pre-workshop “ABCs of Ethics Bowl” session from 4-5. Then Saturday the 26th the fun will run from 11:30-6:30 Eastern.
Hosted by our friends at the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl, sponsored by the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, I’m signed up and very much looking forward. Only problem: can’t decide whether to follow the In the Classroom or Engaging the World track… Hope to see you there!
2024-2025 NHSEB Regional Case 1 This Used to Be My Home Study Guide
2024-2025 NHSEB Regional Case 7 Infographic Activism Study Guide with Bonus Gemini AI Script
2024-2025 NHSEB Regional Case 9 Parents Out of Bounds Study Guide
Here’s another superb NHSEB case study guide from our friend Coach Michael Andersen, followed by a lecture video by Yours Truly on a related philosophical article that I use in my Ethics Intro classes.
Together, your team should be in a great position to rock this one. Enjoy!
2023-2024 NHSEB Regional Cases 12 Sartorial Shuffle, 15 Miners, Not Minors, and 16 Is Whatney Worth It? Study Guides
Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! We’re enjoying it with a little snow here in East Tennessee – have sleds tied to the back of the family 4-wheeler ready to go. Hoping you’re staying cozy wherever you find yourself.
Coming into the home stretch of NHSEB regionals, here are three additional study guides from Coach Michael. His team will be participating in the Oregon HSEB February 3rd and 4th at Portland State.
Special kudos to Michael and team for being willing to share these with the full Ethics Bowl community, including teams they’ll go up against in a few weeks. Now that’s the spirit of Ethics Bowl!
CheatBot or SuperTutor? ChatGPT for Ethics Bowl Zoom Debrief
This past Sunday, a small group of Ethics Bowl organizers, coaches and enthusiasts met for an informal, unofficial discussion on how ChatGPT and other generative AI tools might be used for Ethics Bowl. The purpose wasn’t to settle much of anything, but to inspire further discussion at the upcoming NHSEB regionals and nationals, as well as IEB nationals.
Why? Teams are surely using it. And given that Ethics Bowl participants, coaches, judges, moderators, organizers, their families and fans are among the most thoughtful people in the world, inviting them into a collective discussion on how to properly incorporate this technology seems a no-brainer. It’s an ethics question about Ethics Bowl – doesn’t get much more relevant than that. If you agree, please share this article and/or the accompanying recording, and report back any and all ideas worth sharing. Some upshots:
- How to Best Leverage AI for Ethics Bowl Prep: Think of it as a conversation partner, tutor, rough draft-generator and/or judge/opposing team simulator. Understand its limitations. Fact check. Reason check. Moral blind spot check. Bias check. It’s a strong supplement to, but not a replacement for, human wisdom and deliberation. And it performs best when guided with insightful follow-ups.
- On Worries that a Team Might Use AI to Write a Presentation Script: Using ChatGPT for Ethics Bowl prep isn’t analogous to asking it to do your homework because a) teams need to come to a consensus prior to the event (and it’s unlikely an entire team would agree to memorize and regurgitate a chatbot’s script), and b) due to EB’s live, interactive nature, any team overly reliant on an AI script would be embarrassingly exposed during commentary response and judge Q&A. Also, bowlers are a special self-selected subgroup of the population, far less likely to do anything that might constitute cheating than your average student (most of whom are also unlikely to cheat, but we educators are often paranoid about that).
- Steps Ethics Bowl Leaders Can Take: While a team might get away with memorizing an eloquent opening presentation script written for them by a chatbot (the risk is low, but one could), this can be partially mitigated by adjusting score sheets to increase the relative weighting of the commentary, commentary response and judge Q&A portions. (Rules committees, steering committees, other leaders – please give this additional thought – tweaking rubrics might help as well.)
- Steps Ethics Bowl Coaches Can Take: The broader community of Ethics Bowl coaches (including Ethics Olympiad, John Stuart Mill Cup, etc. coaches) can and should work together to test, share and recommend AI prompts and techniques that produce the highest quality outputs. They should also remind students of the virtues of democratic deliberation and the risks of intellectual laziness. Consider EthicsBowl.org one place to share such insights.
- Steps Case Committees Can Take: Since generative AI seems more effective at scripting responses on cases about real world events (with published editorials for the AI to scan), case writing committees should consider using more fictitious scenarios or putting twists on real world cases (focusing on some interpersonal moral tension within the broader context of a real world issue). This may be unnecessary, but definitely deserves additional thought.
There was more – please watch the video when you have time. But one thing I argued is that AI can serve as an equalizer, connecting all teams (both advantaged and disadvantaged) with an on-demand tutor with an unmatched knowledge base and inexhaustible stamina. Students with the time and interest can learn pretty much anything, including philosophical ethics, so long as they know how to ask good questions. Background knowledge definitely helps, and learning will be slower when the topic is new. But I’m very optimistic about AI’s potential for education.
Special thanks to Michael Andersen for the idea, the planning and co-hosting, as well as to coaches Dick Lesicko, Angela Vahsholtz-Andersen and Chris Ng (thanks also, Chris, for your notes which helped with this article), organizers Jeanine DeLay and Greg Bock for your preparation, attendance and engagement. And apologies to Gabe Kahn, who gets credit for trying to attend! Next time I’ll more closely monitor the Zoom host notifications…
2023-2024 NHSEB Regional Case 6: Well That’s Debatable Study Guide
Another stellar case analysis study guide from Coach Michael Andersen in Washington.
Matt’s super quick, unsolicited take on the open-closed question distinction offered in the case: no question is “closed” for the true philosopher. We might quickly dismiss certain claims and arguments with good reason. But any idea sincerely expressed deserves consideration. Though my open-mindedness is tested when a friend sends me flat earth videos…
Anyway, the guide is fantastic per usual – thank you, Michael! The link to SchoolofThought.org‘s “Rules of Civil Conversation” alone make it worth every team’s review. In fact, let’s highlight those rather nice rules below… Why isn’t Ethics Bowl partnering with these hilariously (“let’s avoid the apocalypse”? – ha!) good folks? I’m an instant fan.
Balancing Humility with Principle
I’ve been reading Rabbi Joshua Liebman’s classic, Peace of Mind, and came across a section on open-mindedness and moral confidence I thought would resonate with the Ethics Bowl community.
“Tolerance is not moral apathy or easy deviation from established principles. If we say apathetically, ‘One notion is a good as another,’ we are not being tolerant; we are merely being lazy… Dense, unenlightened people are notoriously confident that they have the monopoly on truth… But anyone with the faintest glimmerings of imagination knows that truth is broader than any individual conception of it… Renan’s remark that our opinions become fixed at the point where we stop thinking should be sufficient warning against premature hardening of our intellectual arteries, or too stubborn insistence that we are infallibly and invariably right” (76).
Much of the world behaves otherwise, but cocksure arrogance vs. relativistic indifference is a false dilemma.
The mature approach, which takes time to develop, is instead one of principled humility – a desire to seek moral truth combined with a willingness to change our minds.
And that’s exactly the disposition that Ethics Bowl fosters.