Tips

A well designed consensus-building task will:

• involve learners taking on different perspectives by studying different sets of resources;
• be based on authentic differences of opinion that are actually expressed by someone somewhere outside of classroom walls;
• be based on matters of opinion and fact, not just fact;
• result in the development of a common report that has a specific audience (real or simulated) and is created in a format that is analogous to one used in the world outside classroom walls (e.g., a policy white paper, a recommendation to some government body, a memorandum of understanding).

Examples

• In Ivory Everywhere, Tusk, Tusk the group must reach consensus on the controversial issue of the ivory trade and develop a balanced report on the situation with a recommendation on what CITES's viewpoint should be.
• In Tom March's Searching for China, six different perspectives must be debated and synthesized into a common policy recommendation.