Using a Bracket-Style Debate Tournament to Facilitate Integration Across Primary Scientific Literature

Recently, there has been growing interest in enhancing students' engagement with primary scientific literature to facilitate improved understanding of the scientific process, enhance critical thinking skills, foster an appreciation for the nuances of empirical research, and ultimately help students become more discerning consumers of information. We leveraged game-based learning principles to develop an innovative teaching activity designed to promote critical reading and analysis of primary scientific literature. In this activity students prepared a mini-presentation on a research article and then teams debated strengths and weaknesses of each article in tournament-style matchups. Students then wrote a short paper integrating and summarizing the class discussion. Student feedback indicated that the bracket-style debate tournament helped students make connections across readings, think critically, contextualize scientific findings, and find science more approachable. This activity offers a unique and effective way to promote collaborative and competitive learning across a range of course formats and settings.