The debate assignment was a great learning experience for me. I have been thinking of why registered nurses (RNs) had to learn about debate as soon as I read the course outline on September 8th, the first day of the course. What was it so good about debate? Without any knowledge about debate, my anxiety level was intensified! When I looked back, I realized that I had not slept through most of the nights since early September until the debate was over on November 10th, the day I completed the closing presentation. Once it was done, my body relaxed and I felt sick for the rest of the week. I was so weak that my attention span was short and I got tired easily. Not much was done during that week except sleeping, taking naps, and doing simple chores in between naps. After the family doctor ordered some blood work done on November 11th, I started to take the Chinese herbal medicine for two weeks. My body recovered slowly. From week one to week ten, I had gone through a very interesting discovery journey of completing the debate assignment.
From Week One to Week Four
	On day one of the course, I printed the Course Withdrawal Form and kept it in the front pocket of the binder. I told myself to fax it in if I could not make through this assignment. This was my back-up plan! In the first two weeks, I kept asking myself five questions. Why did I have to learn about debate? What were the implications to learn about debate? How did it relate it to my clinical practice? How could it demonstrate the advanced level of nursing practice? How did this assignment support the title of this nursing course? I came up with some rationales to convince me continuing this course.
	In the first two weeks, my thinking process made some turns. This was not just about debate. The assignment was about using debate format to deal with issues. The main focus was issues. Yes, I had to deal with clinical issues and management issues on the daily basis. Debate could be an excellent tool for me to learn how to articulate issues and to deal with issues effectively. I got my answers to the first three questions above. It made sense for me to continue this learning journey.
	In the third week, a new challenge confirmed my direction to keep going with this course. Reading all the articles related to debate, I was very confused during my first attempt to understand the terminology of debate. How could I label the terms such as premise(s), conclusion, argument, and fallacy, to the information from the article, The press discovers a nursing shortage (Idelson, 2001)? The strong sense of uncertainty was overwhelming during the process of completing the practice assignment, formulating debate arguments for the claim: Recruitment strategies will solve the nursing shortage. I had to read the required readings a few times. I realized that the challenges were to apply the abstract concept of debate into actual practice of debate, and to demonstrate the logical reasoning process of an individual’s internal thinking process to the audience. Yes, indeed debate was at the advanced level of nursing practice and the debate assignment answered the last two questions above.
	In the fourth week, I continued to explore how the debate process related to the advanced issues of nursing practice. Reviewing the five required core courses of the program, Master of Nursing, I realized that NURS 603, NURS 607, and NURS 611 were courses focused on knowledge inquiry and nursing research. Why NURS 608 and NURS 609 were the other two required core courses of this program? What so special about these two courses that made them required core courses but not other required curriculum courses? Was there any connectedness between the courses, NURS 608 and NURS 609? In the fourth week, I answered these three questions in my mind.
I had developed my personalized philosophy of nursing and internalized the nursing values that have been guiding my clinical practice since the completion of NURS 608 last fall semester. That was the internalized and personalized foundation for nursing practice. Which course would be the counterpart? What would be the external and practical tools that advanced the clinical practice? This course has been providing me opportunities to learn about nursing history, advanced trends and issues, debate process, trend paper outline and annotated bibliography, how to critique classmates’ debate presentations, and how to support classmates’ pursue of developing their trend paper. This online learning environment created numerous learning opportunities. The debate process and responses to the classmates’ comments could accelerate the learning process to the peak of its intensity! The above discussion answered the first two questions in the preceding paragraph. How would I answer the last question?
Was there any connectedness between the courses, NURS 608 and NURS 609? I learned about pragmatism and borrowed theories in the course, NURS 608. When I was reading the required readings for debate in week three and week four, at least two to three authors mentioned about philosophers liked to debate in certain ways. Yes, I found my own discovery: debate would be a form of borrowed theory from the discipline of philosophy, a typical example of applying pragmatism into nursing practice! I liked my own inductive approach. It demonstrated my logical reasoning that encouraged me to take the challenge of the debate process. I answered all my questions but it did not imply that I would have a smooth sail in the coming weeks.
From Week Five to Week Eight: The Fours Weeks Before My Debate Week
	There were four debates presented before my turn. Each time I read the class’ power point (ppt) presentations; I thought to myself that they articulated so well that I could not do a better job than theirs. English is my second language. I have to struggle with it from time to time. Just the thought of posting the ppt presentations, I had been losing my confidence slowly in those four weeks. I was not only losing my mental strength but also struggling to learn how to research online, and how to use the ppt presentation program for the first time! Encountering computer problems, I could not accomplish much with the online research during my two days of vacation. Working eight to ten hours overtime a week for almost two years plus full-time work schedule and family commitments, I did not have much time to keep up with the course demand. My physical strength had been wearing down slowly at the same time. All these factors made my learning of the debate assignment a challenging and rewarding journey. 
	Reviewing the four debates, I recognized two findings. Firstly, pro side and con side could find many references to support their position statement. This finding generated my conclusion that references might not be the most important information during the debate process. The two significant learning objectives of debate were the flow of logical reasoning that demonstrated the individual’s internal thinking, and the ability to articulate the flow of logical reasoning into powerful and vivid messages to convince the audience supporting the individual’s position statement. Based on these two learning objectives, I provided feedbacks to classmates’ debates on how to present the position statement, premises, and arguments by thematic approach, and grouping ideas into three main themes rather than a list of six to seven points. Providing comments going slide by slide might become very tedious, and might not serve the purpose of overall constructive feedbacks, or sometimes could be very discouraging to the presenters. The first debate in week five was an example that pro side of hiring full-time nurses was almost “attacked” by many classmates based on their personal experiences of working part-time. How to frame up questions and to present ideas to convince audience were research topics in the discipline of psychology. Learning knowledge from the discipline of psychology was another way to advance the debate process.  The debate topic, that all nine-year-old girls should receive the HPV vaccination, was a good one to demonstrate the dynamics of debate. The ppt presentations demonstrated how to frame and to present arguments, premises, and conclusions, to convince the audience to understand and to accept the presenter’s logical reasoning, and to support the position statement! 
	Secondly, the thematic rebuttal and the strategy of “attacking` the tree truck, not the branches and twigs” (Greenwell, Driscoll, Byrne, & Moss, 2001) were the two main strategies in debate. In the first few debates, ppt presentations tended to be point by point. In the latter debates, I could recognize patterns of thematic rebuttal in some presentations and that made me feel a sense of accomplishment and encouraging in my learning of the debate process. 
Week Nine: My Debate Week
The peak time of learning the debate was the five to six hours that I spent on organizing classmates’ comments and wrote up the eight pages to respond to the class. Completing the opening presentation and the rebuttal, the information of the debate topic, program management, was like puzzle pieces of references in my mind. Answering all the classmates’ questions and responding to their comments, I had to mentally re-organize the information and those puzzle pieces of references, and created them into the “big picture” of program management. This mental exercise facilitated my learning as the professor had described in one of the online posting dated September 18, 2009 at 4:09pm, “One of the reasons is that to engage successfully in a debate, student must become immersed in the entire range of facts surrounding an issue – the facts from both sides of the issue.” After completing the eight pages, I experienced the sense of “immersed in the entire range of facts surrounding an issue”! 
Reflecting on the experience of responding to the classmates’ comments of the debate topic, I realized that debate is a methodology to deal with issues by looking at the big picture from different perspectives such as pro side and con side, and by zeroing into those main factors causing an issue, i.e. thematic approach. Achieving these objectives, an individual demonstrated the expert level of proficiency in clinical practice as described by Benner in her classic writing, From novice to expert (1982). This is truly an advanced level of clinical practice.
Week Ten: My Reflective Thinking Process
When I was preparing the annotated bibliography for the trend paper in week ten, I read an article described the participants of the first international symposium debated on many issues of places of death (Mpinga, Pennec, Gomes, Cohen, Higginson, Wilson, & Rapin, 2006). I inferred that debate might be a format of knowledge inquiry in conferences. It was another interesting discovery in my learning journey of the debate process. 
Conclusion
	In the past ten weeks, I learned that debate was the advanced level of clinical practice to deal with issues. I had to examine an issue from pro side and con side, different perspectives, to understand the complexity of an issue. Using thematic approach to zero into the central theme(s) of the issue, I could look into options of dealing with an issue more effectively. Despites my high anxiety level, and the demands from work and family, I managed to complete the debate assignment and learned how debate related to clinical practice.