Collaborative argumentation in academic education

Abstract

The general purpose of this research is to discover principles for the design of educational tasks that provoke collaborative argumentation. The specific research question concentrates on the relationship between question asking and argumentation and is examined in three different collaborative learning tasks involving advanced university students. These studies aim at providing criteria for organising educational situations that elicit argumentation during which opinions change and new knowledge is being created, within constraints (course duration, exam criteria, student expectations) set by current higher education. We discuss some factors influencing argumentation (the role of the student, peer, tutor, task, instruction and medium) and specific attention is paid to question asking. Then we report three studies conducted at our educational department. These studies involve comparable students, a similar domain, but differ in many other respects: the mode of communication (oral, typewritten), the presence of the tutor, instruction on argumentation and/or question asking, assigned task goals (competition, consensus), and the type of required outcome. Each study reveals prominence of different types of questions and question generation mechanisms. In addition, the relations found between question asking and argumentation change between studies. In comparing and interpreting these studies, we discuss results in the light of provoking collaborative argumentation in regular academic learning situations.