Discussion Board Activities - Module 6

1.  6.13 Discussion Board Activity - The Great Debate!

3.  Online Application Journal (and CRA 6.38)

You will probably want to print this page so that you have the assignment in front of you as you interact in the discussion rooms.


6.13 Discussion Board Activity - The Great Debate!

This point and counter point debate is the most challenging small group activity yet.  Your team is going to need your full participation.  You will need to check Groups for your team's posts at least twice a day.  If you are going to be unavailable during any part of this time, let the members of your group know. There is no moderator or summarizer for this debate. You need to work out roles and responsibilities among yourselves. You're getting pretty good at that; you don't need me to make these assignments any more.

This activity is fast paced and will require team members to carefully organize and coordinate their division of labor.  As a member of one team, you will prepare, debate, and summarize.  At the end of the debate, as an individual, you will adjudicate the debate of another four teams.

We will debate the following statement: 

Success in sport requires the possession of certain personality traits or typical responses; simply adopting the appropriate role-related athletic behaviors is not enough.  

One team will argue that this statement is true.  The other team will argue that this statement is false.  You will notice that this statement uses the language of Hollander's model (see Cox).  It is also related to the distinction between personality traits and psychological states (also in Cox).  The outside reading in your XanEdu packet will also be very helpful.   

Morgan, W. P. (1980). The trait psychology controversy. Research Quarterly, 51, 50-76.

Vealey, R. (1989).  Sport personology: A paradigmatic and methodological analysis.  Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 11, 216-235.

Horn, T.S. (2002). Personality and sport behavior. Advances in Sport Psychology, Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 43-82.

Note: The Horn chapter is a long chapter and is in three sections in XanEdu.
 

The idea behind the debate is that you will draw from these readings to make either the affirmative or negative argument (and win the debate, of course:-)   

The Schedule:

Thursday, March 22, 2007 : Individual teams prepare for both the affirmative and negative arguments (in their assigned discussion rooms).

Monday, March 26, 2007, 8:00am (U.S. Central): Assignments to Affirmative or Negative positions will be posted for each pairing.  This information will be posted in the Debate Arena in Discussion Board.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007 , by 7:00pm (U.S. Central): Teams post their initial arguments to the Debate Arena.  In addition, after reading the opponent's initial argument, post a question to the opposition.

Thursday, March 29, 2007: Post a group rebuttal, including a response to the opponent's question.

Monday, April 2, 2007 : Post your team's closing arguments in support of your position.

Wednesday, April 4, 2007 : As an individual, decide which argument of another pairing is most convincing.  Send your vote to Dr. Cassidy in an e-mail.  This is called the adjudication and is described below.

The Pairings:

The Comets debate The Liberty
The Monarchs debate The Sting
The Stars debate The Fever

The Resolution:

We will debate the following statement - 

Success in sport requires the possession of certain personality traits or typical responses; simply adopting the appropriate role-related athletic behaviors is not enough.  

Important Information:

1. During the preparation time, each team should gather affirmative and negative supporting points and arguments.  These points and arguments should be based on the readings (Cox textbook and the three XanEdu articles, primarily).  They may be illustrated by your professional knowledge. Remember, you don't know whether you will have to take the affirmative or the negative, so prepare both well.

2. Each team will have a discrete work space, in Groups, accessible only to the team members (and Dr. Cassidy) for their organization, preparation, and private discussions throughout the week.

3. The actual debate session will take place in the Debate Arena.  The Debate Arena in Discussion Board will be open for everyone in the class to read.

4. Initial argument, question, rebuttal and response to question, and summary may be posted by any team member; however, each team must work together to construct their message.  Only one post per team to each debate section (i.e., initial argument, question, rebuttal and response to question, and summary).

5. Support your arguments; organize your arguments; present your arguments concisely.  No more than approximately 300 words per debate post.

6. Participating in the "behind the scenes" preparation in your team's discussion work space is required.  You must help your team prepare their debate posts in order to get any credit for this assignment.

The Adjudication:

1. Read all postings, affirmative and negative, for all of the debate pairings your team is not involved in.  (Obviously, you are expected to read the postings for the pairing your team is involved in as well!!!)  For the adjudication activity, you are observing only, and not reading in order to assist in rebutting or summarizing for either team.

2. After the summaries have been posted to the debates you are adjudicating, decide which argument was more persuasive and compelling to you for each of the other two pairings in each of the debates. You should adjudicate two debates - the debates of the other four teams.

3. Submit your decision to Dr. Cassidy via private email by Wednesday, April 4, 2007.  Your email should include the following information:

• Pairing you observed (e.g., Comets debating Liberty)

• Argument (either Affirmative or Negative) you felt prevailed

• Notation of the point(s) or reason(s) that strongly influenced your decision.
  
  Do the above for each of the two debates you adjudicate.

4. The responses will be tallied, and each debate team will be notified of the final results. The team is also given a summary of the comments that adjudicators made in #3, above.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me (Dr. Cassidy).  Work hard, but have fun.  This debate is designed to be an exciting way to understand personality and sport performance.

Online Application Journal

For this journal post, you are asked to complete Discussion Board Activity 6.38 as part of your journal post.

CRA 6.38 reads:

A characteristic of competition is the limitation of time that a coach has to make decisions that can affect individual and team play. In sports that allow substitution, it can be important to “read” the mood state of a player at a particular point during the game. The decision to substitute can have a significant effect on what is often called “momentum,” or the mood state of the team. The negative psychic energy of a player, (i.e., negative mood state), can permeate team play and affect the outcome of the contest. However, if the coach substitutes and effectively changes the players mood state, the result can have a calming or positive psychic energy effect on the player as well as the team.

The assignment for this activity is to develop a “psychic energy map” that provides you indicators of mood state or evidence of a developing mood state of an athlete.

At the conclusion of the Discussion Board Activity, you should have a “check list” of somatic, affective, and behavior characteristics of different levels of mood state. Post your answers on our Discussion Board. Facilitating questions include:

• What are the types of indicators for feeling state, affect, emotion, and mood state?

• How can I know which state the athlete is in?

• Is there any way to “suspect” that an athlete may be more susceptible to different mood states?

• Are there indicators, other than visible, that can provide evidence of a mood state?

• What behaviors are characteristic of various phases of a developing mood state?

At the end of each module, you will be asked to post one message in your Groups discussion board that: (1) identifies and discusses at least three major concepts, principles, or ideas gained from the readings and (2) describes briefly why the ideas are important or useful to you; that is, what is your understanding of each concept and what are the implications of each concept for your professional practice or how could they be applied in a sport context?

The aim of the online application journal is threefold:
(1) it demonstrates that you can discuss in your own words concepts from the readings,
(2) it provides a vehicle for relating course content to a "real-world" context or your own work applications, and
(3) it creates a portfolio of shared ideas as a knowledge product for the group. 

These posts are to be substantive posts, and will be evaluated based on the following rubric.

By Wednesday, April 4, 2007: 
Post your journal entry to your appropriate journal group in Groups.  Respond to the journal posts of all members of your group. 

Return to Module 6