NOVA — Education through debate on ELBO

NOVA is ELBO's education sub-universe, designed for CEGEP, university, and high school teachers who want to integrate structured debate into their teaching. NOVA gives teachers tools to create argumentative exercises with evaluation grids, timer, recording, and grading, and gives students a verifiable ECHO profile that builds up their skills throughout their courses.

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NOVA's teaching tools

NOVA includes several tools: structured FOR/AGAINST debate with timer and grid, live interactive quiz (Kahoot-style), class poll to measure opinion shift before/after a debate, collective brainstorm with virtual sticky notes and categorization, student presentation with moderated Q&A and peer evaluation, Socratic discussion (open exploration without FOR/AGAINST) and prep space with AI help to structure arguments.

Organizational structure

NOVA uses an Organization → Class → Activity hierarchy. The school or department creates an organization, teachers create classes within it, and in each class they organize gradable argumentative activities. Students join their class via an invite code and their performances enrich their ECHO profile.

Skills developed and assessed

NOVA allows you to assess and certify critical thinking, argumentative rigor, quality of oral expression, active listening ability, and empathy. These skills are measured using customizable grids and accumulate in the student's ECHO profile — a verifiable argumentative CV that follows them beyond the course.