Supporting debates with a real-time feedback system

Feedback systems can improve collaborative working and learning. We investigate a novel real-time feedback system that enables a subtle and unobtrusive interaction between learners and trainers in the context of debates. Novices to structured debates practiced in debate clubs need to learn fundamental rhetorical skills. The argumentation follows a well-defined structure: claim, explanation and example. Learners receive feedback about their rhetorical performance in the end of debates which complicates the immediate adaptation. We introduce a real-time feedback system enabling an unobtrusive teacher-student dialog. Teachers virtually communicate their assessment about the presented performance using a smart phone; students adapt the structure of their debate according to the visual feedback that is presented on a tablet. We tested our prototype in the field and applied it to two debates. We found that participants that used our feedback system valued the immediate feedback and stated high satisfaction about their own performance.