Promoting students’ argument comprehension and evaluation skills: Implementation of two training interventions in higher education

Abstract

The ability to comprehend and evaluate informal arguments is important for making sense of scientific texts and scientific reasoning. However, university students often lack the skills necessary to comprehend the functional structure and evaluate the structural plausibility of informal arguments. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of two training interventions to a) improve students’ argument comprehension (identification of argument structure), and to b) improve students’ argument evaluation (distinguishing good vs. bad arguments). The training interventions were implemented as a voluntary online add-on to a regular university course. The study used a crossover-experimental design with a pre-test and two training phases in which participants (N = 29) alternated between the two training interventions. Students generally improved on the measures of scientific literacy that were practiced in each training intervention. The results provide evidence that voluntary online training interventions for components of scientific literacy can be effectively integrated into higher education settings. However, results further showed an interference effect between the training interventions, indicating that students had problems integrating the different aspects of scientific literacy targeted in the two training interventions.