Supporting Argumentative Collaboration in Communities of Practice

Abstract

Providing the necessary means to support and foster argumentative collaboration is essential for Communities of Practice to achieve their goals. However, current tools are unable to cope with the evolving stages of the collaboration. This is primarily due to the inflexible level of formality they provide. Arguing that a varying level of formality needs to be offered in systems supporting argumentative collaboration, this chapter proposes an incremental formalization approach that has been adopted in the development of CoPe_it!, a Web-based tool that complies with collaborative principles and practices, and provides members of communities engaged in argumentative discussions and decision making processes with the appropriate means to collaborate towards the solution of diverse issues. According to the proposed approach, incremental formalization can be achieved through the consideration of alternative projections of a collaborative workspace.