Jerry Andriessen

Argumentation, Computer Support, and the Educational Context of Confronting Cognitions

The current period in the history of mankind has been coined as the knowledge age (Brown & Duguid, 2000; Bereiter, 2002). This term serves to distinguish this period from its predecessor, the information age. In contrast to information, knowledge entails a knower, is hard to detach from its owner, and seems to be something that we digest rather than hold. Knowledge lies less in databases than in people, and has to be disclosed by some form of collective activity, and people have to learn how be engaged in collaborative activities that produce new knowledge. In professional contexts at least, the people who construct knowledge are called ‘knowledge workers’, a term that can be associated with slavery, under those who coordinate them, and who need knowledge for economic reasons. Because knowledge does not really have ownership, it can be turned into economic value by anyone who knows how to do it. Whatever the undertone, currently there is a more than humanitarian interest in collaborative learning, especially in forms of collaboration that allow people to display and develop their knowledge.

Learning through synchronous electronic discussion

Abstract This article reports a study examining university student pairs carrying out an electronic discussion task in a synchronous computer mediated communication (CMC) system (NetMeeting). The purpose of the assignment was to raise students’ awareness concerning conceptions that characterise effective pedagogical interactions, by collaboratively comparing and discussing their analyses of a dialogue between a tutor and a student. To examine whether the use of synchronous CMC could meet this end, students’ dialogues are characterised in terms of their constructive and argumentative contributions, and by their focus on the meaning of concepts. In addition, a comparison was made with a control group in which no peer coach was available with two forms of peer coaching. Peer coaches were focussed either on structuring arguments or on reflectively checking arguments in terms of strength and relevance. First, the results indicate that the study of students’ learning from electronic discussions requires an analysis of focus in relation to argumentation. Second, the coaching instruction did not fulfil our expectations. In this study, students seem to need support to focus on meaning rather than on argumentation in general, but they may also need support to hold overview, to keep track of their discussion and to organise their interface. Text-based electronic communication seems to be sensitive to such issues that may cause meaningful interaction to be disturbed.

Supporting interactive argumentation: Influence of representational tools on discussing a wicked problem

This study describes difficulties students can encounter when discussing a wicked problem and in what way two different representational tools can support interactive argumentation between students. About 55 pairs discussed in chat and wrote about genetically modified organisms in a groupware environment, supported by a text-outline or an argumentative diagram. The expectation was that students who were constructing a diagram would argue in a more thorough way, which is called the broadening and deepening in the space of debate. The expectations were partially confirmed. Diagrams help students to argue in a more thorough way, but only in the diagrams itself and not, as expected, in the discussion. This article shows the difficulties of supporting interactive argumentation with representational tools, because of the great amount of other variables in task and learning environment that effect the way students broaden and deepen an argument.

Rainbow: A framework for analysing computer-mediated pedagogical debates

In this paper we present a framework for analysing when and how students engage in a specific form of interactive knowledge elaboration in CSCL environments: broadening and deepening understanding of a space of debate. The framework is termed “Rainbow,” as it comprises seven principal analytical categories, to each of which a colour is assigned, thus enabling informal visualisation by the analyst of the extent to which students are engaging in interaction relating to potential achievement of its pedagogical goal. The categories distinguish between activities that are part of the prescribed assignment and activities that are not, and between task-focused and non-task-focused activities. Activities focused on managing the interaction itself are distinguished from argumentative interaction. Notably, an operational definition of what it means to broaden and deepen understanding in this case is also provided here. The functional Rainbow analysis is complemented by an analysis of topics and subtopics that enables identification of one form of conceptual deepening of the question. In comparison with existing analysis techniques, Rainbow synthesises much of what is known into a single framework, with a broad theoretical base. The usability and educational relevance of the framework has been validated experimentally across a variety of collaborative learning tasks and communication media. Possible and actual extensions to the framework are discussed, with respect to additional CSCL tools, domains and tasks.

Representational Tools in Computer-Supported Collaborative Argumentation-Based Learning: How Dyads Work With Constructed and Inspected Argumentative Diagrams

This article investigates the conditions under which diagrammatic representations support collaborative argumentation-based learning in a computer environment. Thirty dyads of 15- to 18-year-old students participated in a writing task consisting of 3 phases. Students prepared by constructing a representation (text or diagram) individually. Then they discussed the topic and wrote a text in dyads. They consolidated their knowledge by revising their individual representation. There were 3 conditions: Students could use either (a) the individual texts they wrote, (b) the individual diagrams they constructed, or (c) a diagram that was constructed for them based on the text they wrote. Results showed that students who constructed a diagram themselves explored the topic more than students in the other conditions. We also found differences in the way collaborating dyads used their representations. Dyads who engaged in deep discussion used their representations as a basis for knowledge construction. In contrast, dyads who engaged in only shallow discussion used their representations solely to copy information to their collaborative text. We conclude that diagrammatic representations can improve collaborative learning, but only when they are used in a co-constructive way.

Collaborative argumentation in academic education

The general purpose of this research is todiscover principles for the design ofeducational tasks that provoke collaborativeargumentation. The specific research questionconcentrates on the relationship betweenquestion asking and argumentation and isexamined in three different collaborativelearning tasks involving advanced universitystudents. These studies aim at providingcriteria for organising educational situationsthat elicit argumentation during which opinionschange and new knowledge is being created,within constraints (course duration, examcriteria, student expectations) set by currenthigher education. We discuss some factorsinfluencing argumentation (the role of thestudent, peer, tutor, task, instruction andmedium) and specific attention is paid toquestion asking. Then we report three studiesconducted at our educational department. Thesestudies involve comparable students, a similardomain, but differ in many other respects: themode of communication (oral, typewritten), thepresence of the tutor, instruction onargumentation and/or question asking, assignedtask goals (competition, consensus), and thetype of required outcome. Each study revealsprominence of different types of questions andquestion generation mechanisms. In addition,the relations found between question asking andargumentation change between studies. Incomparing and interpreting these studies, wediscuss results in the light of provokingcollaborative argumentation in regular academiclearning situations.

The role of diagrams in collaborative argumentation-based learning

In this article two studies on the use of diagrams in computer-supported collaborative learning are compared. Focus is on the way argumentative diagrams can be used during collaborative learning tasks, more specifically how diagrams support argumentative interaction between students when they discuss ill-defined topics. The main goal is to discover how diagramconstruction before discussion, and diagramconstruction during discussion, influence the way students explore the space of debate during discussion. Twenty pairs of 16/ 17-year-old students were randomly selected from 126 pairs. Ten pairs worked with a diagram before discussion and ten during discussion. The research showed that students use diagrams in very different ways, ranging froma m eans for talking to just a notebook. Our expectation that using a diagramduring discussion leads to more depth in discussion than using one before discussion, was not confirmed. Possible explanations for this finding are structure of the task, and the way students interpreted the goal of the task. r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Designing argumentation tools for collaborative learning

The focus of education has shifted towards working actively, constructively and collaboratively, as this is believed to enhance learning. The studies discussed here deals with the influence of different CMC (Computer Mediated Communication) tools on argumentation processes during collaboration. The purpose of our research is to investigate the effect of computer supported environments and its tools on the final product through differences in the participants’ collaboration processes. In this chapter we will concentrate on students collaboratively taking part in argumentation via CMC systems. Computer environments that support collaborative writing can emphasize both the constructivist and collaborative aspects through its active and interactive nature.

Argumentation as Negotiation in Electronic Collaborative Writing

The goal of our research is to analyse the relationship between communication and task execution in computer supported collaborative learning. The current paper is about a collaborative writing situation in which pairs of students have to produce an argumentative text, while collaborating via an electronic network. In our perspective, this is a task from which students are supposed to learn about the concepts that are discussed and written about. Learning happens because in this situation participants negotiate about text content. We will specifically address the issue of how argumentation contributes to the knowledge negotiation process in collaborative electronic writing: to what extent is text content negotiated? What forms of negotiation can be observed? Are there relationships between the types of negotiation and the content that is discussed?

Exploring Relational Regulation in Computer-Mediated (Collaborative) Learning Interaction: A Developmental Perspective.

This article presents a qualitative analysis showing the dependency of effective collaborative argumentation on interpersonal relational aspects that develop during synchronous interaction. Four regulatory principles are proposed as propelling the interaction, and of these, autoregulation, or the conservative restraints within the existing relation, appears to be the dominant force. When using a structured dialogue system (SDS), instead of free chat, via roles and sentence-openers, the social dimension of the relation between participants disappears from the surface interaction. Even though using the SDS seems to foster a more focused and task-functional approach, argumentation appears to affect the relations between participants in a negative way, since after an argumentative sequence, repair of the relationship takes place. It might even be argued that, because of relational stress, in many cases, argumentation is momentarily suspended.