Promoting Argumentation in Forum Discussions.

Every semester more than one instructor approaches me with interest in improving the dialogue on their forums. An article I recently read might be of interest to those with this question.   The study shares research on promoting argumentation in online forum debates.  During the study students were asked to label discussion posts as: argument, elaboration, issue, evidence, evaluate, and suggest.  While the findings were not conclusive, it led me to think that this management tool might be helpful as a guide to students new to online discussion and debate.  It also might help curb the repetitive or pointless posts that students sometimes sumbit, such as "I agree".     Read the full research at the link below.

-Greg Noack

Effects of Pre-structuring Discussion Threads on Group Interaction and Group Performance in Computer-supported Collaborative Argumentation
C. Darren Brooks* and Allan Jeong
Florida State University, USA
http://www1.open.edu.cn/elt/26/epdtgigpcca.pdf