Based at the Parr Center for Ethics at UNC Chapel Hill, the National High School Ethics Bowl (NHSEB) promotes respectful, supportive, and in-depth discussion of ethics among thousands of high school students across the US. The NHSEB aims to take seriously the contribution that teenagers make as members of their communities, cultivate skills and virtues central to democratic citizenship, and prepare students to navigate challenging moral issues in a thoughtful and open-minded way.
The Need
NHSEB’s core objective is to get students thinking, talking, and working together on tough moral and political issues. At the start of the pandemic, NHSEB needed a technological solution that would ensure this incredibly valuable national network of events didn’t fizzle out because they couldn’t meet in person due to COVID.
NHSEB is similar in structure to a debate. Multiple teams are given a case to discuss, and judges make decisions based in-part on how the team engages. Unlike debate, however, teams are allowed to agree on their conclusions and are encouraged to follow reasons and evidence where they lead. The collaborative truth-seeking model that NHSEB promotes rewards students for the depth of their thought, their ability to think analytically, and the respect they show to the perspectives of their peers.
The Challenge
NHSEB showed that they could run an event using Zoom with break-out groups in the early days of the pandemic, but they quickly realized the overhead of managing the format in this way was unsustainable at a nationwide scale. Having facilitators distracted by multiple steps as they used the technology, as opposed to having the event set up beforehand, was far from ideal.
To prepare for shifting the NHSEB to a primarily online experience during the height of the pandemic, a number of considerations needed to be examined. A suitable online platform for Ethics Bowl would need to include a high-level of user accessibility, facilitate building relationships between a large number of people, be cost-efficient and flexible, and, ideally, add value beyond the pandemic.
The Solution
Enable Education built NHSEB a solution, NHSEBOne, that allowed them to automate the process that they ran in Zoom and provided it to them at a much-reduced cost. As part of our own social impact initiatives, Enable Education collaborates on socially-focused projects that train and educate an organization’s stakeholders or community.
The NHSEBOne platform ensures the quality of NHSEB’s program delivery is consistent and scalable from coast to coast in the US. As the pandemic has subsided and many Ethics Bowl events have returned to in-person operations, the NHSEBOne platform has been augmented to support volunteers and students in live, in-person events as well in “Companion Mode.” NHSEBOne’s virtual-first format continues to support the NHSEB Divisional Playoff circuit, outreach, and scrimmage events across the United States.
The Outcome
Enable Education created an online solution for NHSEB that allows for active listening and critical thinking to persist throughout the pandemic and beyond within a safe and supportive environment. Thanks to this partnership, students have continued to take part in NHSEB’s in-depth discussions of ethics nationwide, fostering constructive dialogue and furthering the next generation’s ability to make sound ethical decisions.
In an era of increasing polarization, Enable Education’s partnership with NHSEB has helped to strengthen democratic education, showing that technology can enable empathy and collaboration when it is designed with those goals in mind, now and in the years to come.
If you’d like to chat about learning experience design, gamification, or how Enable can help you begin your organization’s learning journey, schedule a call with one of our team.
