The Democracy Lab: how 20 minutes of debate can revive the lecture

On 24 February 2022, I walked into the University of Glasgow while Russian troops were crossing into Ukraine. I was scheduled to teach a two-hour lecture on development and behavioural economics to students from all over the world, some with family in the war region. I couldn’t just open slide one and deliver the material I planned.

So, instead I started the lecture by posting a question online: how do we analyse this crisis as economists? Then something unexpected happened inside and outside the lecture hall: students who had never voluntarily spoken in a class before began debating with each other. The conversation wouldn’t stop. I received thousands of reactions online, more than a hundred reshares and numerous comments. That was the moment the Democracy Lab was born.

What is the Democracy Lab?

At the start of each two-hour lecture, we spend roughly 20 minutes debating something that is happening now, in the real world. The topic is chosen jointly with my students and shared online ahead of the lecture. Each debate connects, sometimes tightly, sometimes loosely, to the lecture that follows. Over the years we have debated artificial intelligence and the future of work, the generational gap, the psychology of human inaction, climate change, geopolitical conflict and more.

• The lecture is dead – long live the performance
• Spotlight guide: Back to the basics of pedagogy
• Let’s teach students to disagree well

There is no formal assessment. Students speak when they feel ready, and my role is to ensure that all who wish to get a chance to share their views. I also share my views and ask follow-up questions. Guest lecturers have joined us, including a sitting member of the Greek Parliament and a former cabinet minister, who shared experiences from politics, offering inspiration to our students to stand for office themselves. The Lab approaches everyone in the room not just as a student but as a citizen, and importantly as a future leader.

How class debate drove student engagement

The effect on student engagement has been transformative. Students who are active in the debate at the start are visibly more involved for the rest of the lecture. They are able to make connections between theory and the real world. There is a transformation. The lecture becomes more relevant, honest, real.

Many students carry a great deal of anxiety about the future of the world. They read about inequality, climate change and technological disruption, then they sit in lectures being asked to absorb models and graphs. At the same time, our students are worried about their own future: AI threatens their job prospects, democracy feels fragile, and the climate crisis adds to a broader sense of permacrisis. The gap between what is happening to them and what we are teaching them can sometimes feel enormous.

The Democracy Lab helps to close this gap. It gives students a safe space to say: I am not happy with our world, and I want to change this. Once that space is created, the economics that follows feels more relevant. Students have put it better than I can: “It made me feel less alone, but also made me understand the importance of speaking up – something we do not usually do in other courses.” Another simply wrote: “It allowed me to feel less like a number and more like a person. I am really sad it’s over. I guess time flies when you’re having fun.”

Impact beyond the classroom

Something else happened that we did not anticipate. The Lab spilled out beyond the lecture theatre and led to wider civic engagement. Students and I began fundraising together for causes related to our debated topics: breast cancer research, malaria nets, children’s clinics in Africa. I have now run three marathons, in Athens, Thessaloniki and Edinburgh, as part of these efforts. Some of my students ran with me. None of that was planned. It grew out of a culture of engagement that the debates helped to create, and it has become something I now actively offer every year.

A way to ‘rescue the lecture’

I am not arguing that the Democracy Lab is the right approach for every subject or setting. I think of it more as an ongoing experiment. But I feel that our students arrive with far more to say about the world than we typically allow them to share. The time given up for sharing during the debate, I get back 10-fold in the lecture that follows.

As lecturers, we are, let us be honest, competing with students’ phones. Every minute of a lecture, students are choosing between us and everything the internet has to offer. If we want to “rescue the lecture”, we must give students reasons to stay focused in the room.

These class debates transform the lecture from something like a classical concert into a jazz jam session, where educators and students share the stage, express themselves, and become active participants in a process of democratic improvisation.

What would it cost you as an educator to try? And if you do, please share your experience with us, to jointly design teaching approaches that may help “rescue the lecture” and improve our democracy.

Theodore Koutmeridis is a senior lecturer in economics at the University of Glasgow.