Argumentative Knowledge Construction in CSCL

Knowing how to argue is a prerequisite to participation in scientific discourse. In argumentative knowledge construction, learners collaboratively construct and engage in arguments with the goal of learning to argue within a domain. Students have difficulties, however, constructing and evaluating arguments. Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) attempts to address these difficulties by providing students with additional resources and tools to visualize and guide their argumentation. This symposium presents results from empirical studies on facilitating and analyzing argumentative knowledge construction in CSCL. These studies assess the structural and conceptual quality of learners' arguments; provide sequential analyses of how learners exchange arguments in discourse, and investigate the relationship between cognitive processes of learners and the construction of arguments in discourse.