Educational Technologies for Teaching Argumentation Skills

The technique of diagramming arguments was used since the second half of the last century by modern theorists of argumentation such as Wigmore, Toulmin and Beardsley, with theoretical as well as didactic aims. Today, a number of software applications (Argument Diagramming tools) are devoted to support the production of arguments, their analysis and evaluation. Their effectiveness is usually assessed considering the impact they have on people’s acquisition or reinforcement of critical thinking skills. This chapter aims at suggesting criteria to design and evaluate Argument Diagramming tools from the point of view of argumentation theory. Two types of criteria are presented: interaction-related criteria, which are based on the conception of argumentation as a communicative interaction; and argumentation-related criteria, which derive from the very features of argumentation as a specific kind of reasoning.

This chapter presents a detailed study of patterns of verbal interaction in a classroom context. In doing so it extends an important previously developed construct for analysis of productive talk for learning originating within the collaborative learning and intelligent tutoring communities, namely that of transactivity. Specifically, our focus is on argumentation and consensus building processes, which are key processes employed through language by communities in order to define themselves, maintain themselves, and evolve. We motivate the use of this construct for analysis of classroom discussions, describe our analysis framework with examples, and discuss current directions related to automatic analysis of classroom discussions using our transactivity based framework.

Tools for shared critical reasoning are the focus for much innovation in computer supported collaborative learning. Argument diagramming tools allow learners to create shared graphical depictions of their shared reasoning; celebrated exemplars are recognized by their distinctive node and link formats. Many evaluations of these tools have been published, describing their effects on collaboration and learning and offering explanations of the features and mechanisms that engender better argumentation. It would be useful then, to review these evaluations to try to discern common themes and findings, and to understand the different approaches taken. This chapter reviews significant evaluations of collaborative argumentation diagramming tools, it summarises important findings about the features of the tools and their effects on collaboration and learning. The approaches taken in the evaluation of the tools are considered in relation to their assumptions and aims, methods and outcomes.

Argumentation is one of the key competencies in our private and professional lives. However, many people struggle to produce, interpret and evaluate arguments in a systematic and rational fashion. To remedy this situation, a number of computer-based argumentation systems have been developed over the past decades to support or teach argumentation. The use of artificial intelligence techniques holds promise to increase the effectiveness of such systems by automatically analyzing user actions and providing supportive feedback. In this chapter, we review and systemize argumentation analysis approaches with a special focus on the educational uses. We also discuss argument modeling and discussion systems including their analysis approaches, feedback strategies and architectures.

CoFFEE (Collaborative Face to Face Educational Environment) is a suite of applications that has been designed to let teachers and students cooperate during classroom discussions. Teachers can author and design CoFFEE sessions, where each step includes instances of different cooperative tools chosen in a significantly large set (more than 10 tools are currently available). The session is, then, executed in classroom/lab where the collaborative discussion takes place. All CoFFEE tools are highly configurable and, thanks to the concept of session, the functionalities can be adapted for schools of different grade and even for university courses.

From a technological point of view CoFFEE is an expandable framework: new collaborative functionalities can be added as autonomous components; each component can be developed independently from each other, sharing a common user interface. This result has been achieved by building CoFFEE as a rich framework since it offers a consistent set of basic services that can be used as building blocks for totally new collaborative components.

Teaching to argue is challenging. Classic face-to-face approaches do not scale up for large groups due to resource limitations (teacher time), but have shown to be effective. As a consequence, there have been attempts to convey argumentation skills via educational software. Even though some of these systems have shown their suitability in their original domains of application, the systems typically do not generalize – there has been little carry over to other domains. This chapter reviews existing approaches, their technological strengths and weaknesses and proposes a generic architecture to overcome the latter. Based on this architecture, the LASAD (Learning to Argue – Generalized Support Across Domains) framework has been developed. The goal of this framework is to simplify the development of argumentation systems based on some well-defined configurations. In this chapter, we describe the flexibility of the LASAD framework and demonstrate how it can be configured to emulate the existing argumentation systems Belvedere and LARGO.

Argumentation is considered as an activity that promotes learning and critical thinking. Learners who collaboratively argue about a subject are expected to acquire both knowledge and argumentation skills. However research indicates that we need to support both argument construction and collaboration. A form of support is employing computerized collaboration scripts to engage students in argumentation and regulate their activities. Such scripts have been proved to help students develop specific skills like the construction of single arguments or the argumentation sequence. Being an external support collaboration scripts should withdraw after students have internalized the skills they are supposed to, in order to be able to practice the acquired skills in similar tasks. To investigate the effect of scripting and fading on fostering argumentation skills we have built iArguea prototype web-based argumentation environment. In iArgue students are engaged in a jigsaw-type collaboration activity guided by a script that may gradually fade. The results from a preliminary expert-based evaluation were used to improve system design and propose for consideration ideas that could be taken into account when designing argumentation systems.

Most of the serious problems facing our society are political and thus cannot be solved without an active engaged citizenry – one that can evaluate policy arguments on the basis of evidence. This chapter contributes to educational technology for argument by demonstrating how to create a cognitive tutor for policy deliberation by combining: a cognitive model of deliberation, an inquiry environment that emphasizes the construction of causal diagrams, a simple argument algorithm and a Socratic tutor. This approach advances cognitive tutoring across a number of ill-defined domains including policy reasoning (e.g., civics, political science and public policy), domains that argue about causal systems (e.g., science, economics and history) and more generally in domains that use diagrams to represent problems and organize evidence (e.g., argument mapping in philosophy and law and contextual modeling in HCI).

Educational practice and research both readily acknowledge the challenge of getting students, in online contexts, to argue in order to think together in reasoned and intelligent, or ‘scholarly’, ways. In addressing this significant concern we will describe the pedagogical design and rationale, implementation and evaluation of InterLoc - a web-based tool supporting collaborative argumentation and other forms of real-time learning dialogue. InterLoc operationalises a well-attested paradigm of Digital Dialogue Games (DDGs) and provides re-usable learner generated content – that is a textual representation of players’ collaborative thinking (or Collaborative Thinking Text) that can be incorporated into related learning activities and used in various ways. Five case studies, along with a synthesis of the findings are reported, that were performed in a rich and varied range of learning contexts with over 350 students and 10 tutors. Inspired by positive findings from these, we are currently exploring more widespread exploitation through incorporating the approach and technology with near-future semantic and mobile technologies, so this ongoing work will also be briefly discussed.

In the present chapter we bring two case studies of two teachers who moderated discussions in Digalo through the Argunaut system employing two different styles. This intervention was conducted in the framework of a one-year professional development course that focused on the implementation of argumentative dialogue in the classroom using the Digalo tool. These case studies, as well as additional information on teachers' ideas and practices with moderating Digalo discussions using the Argunaut tool, shed light on the way teachers adopt new technology within their daily practices in the classroom. The present study allows us to cautiously point out to what influences teachers' use of new technology in their classroom. Considering the limitation of our study it seems that teachers have their own ideas on what is good for their teaching and they make use of the Arguaut system accordingly. The teachers’ use of the Argunaut tool in a different way than that envisioned by the tool developers doesn't mean that the tool was badly designed or that the teachers’ implementation in their classrooms was faulty. In some cases, discrepancies between envisioned use and use in practice can be the trigger for iterative discussions between teachers and pedagogical researchers, for the purpose of fine-tuning the use of the tools for teachers’ needs. I expect such discussions to be a vehicle that bridge between innovative (Computer Supporting Collaborative Learning) CSCL tools and their use in school under the umbrella of teachers’ professional development.