Abstract:

This presentation reports some analyses of student's arguments in a learning activity entitled "Argue Graph". This activity is intended to make students understand the relationship between learning theories and design choices in courseware development. Students twice respond to an on-line questionnaire about concrete design choices, a first time alone and a second time in pairs. While doing so, they have to provide arguments that support their opinions. Pairs are formed so as to maximise differences within a pair according to the answers the students gave to the individual questionnaire. The analysis of arguments is centered on the effects of discussion and opinion conflict on the elaboration of arguments. The analysis of written discussion is ongoing and first results will be also presented.

Presenter: Patrick Jermann is a doctoral student from TECFA, University of Geneva, Switzerland. He has been working on virtual campus design and collaborative learning for the last three years and is currently spending a year at LRDC, Pittsburgh where he works as a programmer on interactive www applications.