The secret of a good debate is to choose a motion controversial enough to attract along a sizeable audience, but with enough subtleties and ambiguities that top quality speakers can explore without resort to dogmatism or play acting. After last year’s clasically contentious “This house believes that the e-learning of today is essential for the important skills of tomorrow” (90 for, 144 against), it was always going to be hard for Epic , the organisers of The E-Learning Debate, to come up with something to grab the imagination as readily, particularly now that several hundred of us have been able to experience the novelty of a debate in the Oxford Union.
