NCFCA Lexis Guide
October 29, 2012
It is no secret that NCFCA is committed to helping students grow academically while they are developing their communication skills in competition. Communication is meaningless unless the message that is communicated is worthwhile, and the NCFCA leadership recognizes that we develop better communicators when we develop better thinkers. To that end, the league has spent the last several years steadily moving in a direction where assisting students in their academic development has become an important part of our strategy for equipping students to glorify God through their communication.
While NCFCA is the oldest and largest homeschool speech and debate league in existence, facilitating both speech and debate competition for close to two decades now, the last few years have shown the league making an even more concerted effort to provide students with resources that aid them in academic competition and beyond. What began with the introduction of The Source (NCFCA’s annual debate sourcebook, offered in both styles of debate as a complementary benefit to all NCFCA Affiliates) three years ago has become a robust and stimulating collection of resources that aid the Christian homeschool community.
The Summit Seminars (training sessions for parents, coaches, and students) at the National Championship each year, new speech competition categories, additional guidelines for maintaining high debate ethics standards, and a brand-new essay competition for students this year all represent just a few of the ways that NCFCA is working to actively support parents and students both academically and competitively. We are extremely excited about our progress in this area, and this year, for the first time ever, we have partnered with LexisNexis to provide NCFCA students with access to LexisNexis’ powerful research tools at a deep discount.
Many students have already begun to take advantage of their NCFCA-sponsored access to LexisNexis as they have prepared for the upcoming competition season, and we’ve already received a wealth of positive feedback on the program. However, LexisNexis is a professional resource commonly used by lawyers, undergraduate and graduate students and professors, and lawmakers, usually with significant training. Because of its research power and the immense access that it provides, LexisNexis can be confusing and even a bit frustrating at first. To assist NCFCA students with learning to use this invaluable tool, NCFCA has put together a helpful guide, walking students through each step of the LexisNexis basics, as well as introducing some of the more advanced features that the service offers.
This guide is being made available to all NCFCA families as a way of encouraging debaters and coaches as they advance the worth of their research and, as a result, the excellence of NCFCA debate. It is our hope that, as we move forward in developing Christian students, you find this guide a useful resource in this competition season. NCFCA Affiliate families may access their guide on the NCFCA Dashboard once they have signed in to their personal accounts.
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