The Use of Argument Maps as an Assessment Tool in Higher Education

Abstract

The use of argument diagrams to foster argumentation has been an object of research in education, as a way to support studentś argumentative interaction and, potentially, learning. In this paper it is shown how argument analysis and evaluation assisted by means of argument diagramming tools, further developed in artificial intelligence (AI), can also support the assessment of argumentation skills in the classroom. A case study is presented to show how informal logic contributions on fallacies, in particular, can be combined with the data of an argument-diagramming task, to form a method of assessing students’ weaknesses in reasoning about everyday issues using argument maps. Our contribution is mainly methodological, as we suggest an application of AI and argumentation theories in education.