Combining interaction and context design to
support collaborative argumentation using a tool
for synchronous CMC
Simon McAlister
, Andrew Ravenscroftw & Eileen Scanlon


Institute of Educational Technology (IET), Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
wLearning Technology Research Institute, London Metropolitan University, London, UK.
Abstract Empirical studies and theory suggest that educational dialogue can be used to support
learners in the development of reasoning, critical thinking and argumentation. This paper
presents an educational design for synchronous online peer discussion that guides student
dialogue in ways that lead to improved argumentation and collaborative knowledge devel-
opment. This design includes a mediating interface – or tool, linked to a broader set of online
educational activities – a designed local context, where the latter aims to provide conditions
that support argumentation. The approach is based on collaborative working and dialogue
game approaches to discussion. Preliminary findings with UK Open University students
showed the argumentation process was more coherent, varied, deeper and extended when
using our interaction design compared with the use of a simple unstructured interface.
Keywords argumentation, peer collaboration online, synchronous dialogue
Why support collaborative argumentation in
education?
Computer supported collaborative learning is an en-
deavour that has gained in profile in recent years to the
extent that some claim it as ‘the dominant use of
technology in education’ (Dillenbourg 2003, p. IX).
There are a number of research communities (e.g.
cognitive scientists, educationalists and learning
technologists) engaged in studies of the variety of
ways in which computers can be used in collaborative
learning, ranging from joint problem solving, remote
experimentation and distributed design to supporting
conversations between learners. Even when we focus
within this larger endeavour on specific applications of
computer-supported collaborative learning such as
conversations between learners, there are a series of
developments in both the design and evaluation of
such uses. For example, the literature on computer-
mediated communication (and especially conferencing
in distance higher education) has proceeded from
useful insights into both the benefits for learners of-
fered by such technologies and the identification of
difficulties in designing good quality experiences for
learners (see, e.g. Mason & Bacsich 1998; Salmon
2000) to the importance of evaluating such efforts (see
e.g. Jones et al. 2000). In this paper, we approach one
particular type of collaborative activity, educational
dialogue between peers online, and look at ways that
particular designs drawn from past work including
support for argumentation, can illuminate our under-
standing of this type of activity and promote effective
educational interaction.
Previous work has clearly demonstrated that we
often need to explore further than the concept of
Correspondence: Simon McAlister, Institute of Educational
Technology, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7
6AA, UK.
Email: S.R.McAlister@open.ac.uk
Accepted: 17 March 2004
194 r Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004 Journal of Computer Assisted learning 20, pp194–204
Original article

‘collaborative dialogue’ to identify, characterise and
design lower level features – such as roles, rules,
strategies and moves to support particular types of
dialogue in achieving particular educational goals. For
instance, Ravenscroft (2000) and Ravenscroft and
Matheson (2002) demonstrated how a dialogue game
for ‘collaborative argumentation’ – specified in terms
of such features – led to conceptual development in
science. Similarly, Wegerif (1996) has shown how the
approach of ‘exploratory talk’ – based on ground rules
for dialogical reasoning – can lead to improvements in
generic reasoning skills in school children, and Pilk-
ington & Parker-Jones (1996) found that an ‘inquiry’
dialogue in which prompts from a researcher stimu-
lated self-explanation, led to improved reasoning and
reflection compared with unstructured discussion in
dyads of medical students. In brief, this and other work
(see Ravenscroft & Pilkington 2000 for a review)
presents strong support for the notion that structuring
and guiding learners dialogue can lead to clear and
significant educational benefits, and further, that col-
laborative educational argumentation is often essential
to support the sort of ‘deeper dialogue’ that in turn
leads to conceptual development and improved rea-
soning in learners. These empirical studies accord well
with approaches to learning following Vygotsky (1978),
that emphasise the development of higher level mental
processes – such as critical reasoning and reflection,
through internalising linguistic processes – such as
argumentation that occur ‘in the social’.
However, this leads to an ongoing problem of
supporting and developing argumentation skills in
open and distance learning (ODL) students, as they are
often both ‘new’ to academic practice and lack the
opportunity to converse, argue and debate face-to-face
in order to develop such skills. So, building on the
previous work above, we developed a mediating in-
terface and tool – AcademicTalk, linked to a set of
activities – or designed local context, to guide, struc-
ture and support educational argumentation in ODL
situations. In other words, we aimed to ‘scaffold’ the
development and use of argumentation skills in these
learners.
Structured dialogue and designing context
Previous work with dialogue games for collaborative
argumentation (e.g. Ravenscroft & Matheson 2002),
although successful, has pointed out the necessity to
consider the local context in which successful argu-
mentation takes place, as students are unlikely to
‘argue with anyone about anything at anytime’. A
point recently emphasised by Ravenscroft (2004,
2003) who suggested that we need to at least consider,
and if possible design, the local context for interaction,
in order to suitably ground students’ prior knowledge
and cultivate the social, motivational and empathic
features that support meaningful and effective inter-
action. This necessity to create, cultivate or construct a
context for interaction, as well as design the actual
interaction, is particularly important in ODL situa-
tions, where social relationships, shared under-
standings, clear identities and general intersubjectivity
is often limited or lacking. The features of the edu-
cational design that address the interplay of these in-
teraction and contextual issues are described in the
following sections.
Structuring educational argumentation with
AcademicTalk
The AcademicTalk client is an Open Source tool de-
veloped by the first author that builds on the near-
synchronous messaging capability of IRC (Chat)
protocols, adding a packet layer, which provides new
capabilities. It presents a novel interface to the learner
using a threaded structure of messages in which each
message is a reply to a previous message. The key
features of managed synchronous dialogue, explicit
sentence openers and guidance on opener selection,
are described below.
Managed synchronous dialogue
Synchronous discussion has the advantage of the im-
mediacy of live feedback when compared with asyn-
chronous discussion, such as Listserv or conferencing.
Although textual, the forms of communication are clo-
ser to spoken conversation than asynchronous discus-
sion (Garcia & Jacobs 1998) and hence likely to be more
engaging, animating and hopefully enjoyable when
compared with more considered and indirect forms of
interaction such as asynchronous conferencing.
However, there is a problem with the standard Chat
interface that is often used for this purpose (for
example in products such as FirstClass and WebCT),
Tool supporting argumentation 195
& Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004 Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 20, pp194–204