Evaluating a learning environment for case-based argumentation skills

Abstract

CATO is an intelligent learning environment designed to help beginning law students learn basic skills of making arguments with cases, through practice in theory-testing and argumentation tasks. CATO models ways in which experts compare and contrast cases, assess the significance of similarities and differences between cases in light of general domain knowledge, and use the same general knowledge to organize multi-case arguments by issues. CATO communicates its model to students by presenting dynamically-generated argumentation examples and reifying (i.e., making visible) argument structure. Also, the CATO Tools reduce some of the distracting complexity of the students' task. We evaluated CATO in the context of a second-semester legal writing course taught at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. We found that 7.5 hours of CATO instruction led to a statistically significant improvement in students' basic argumentation skills, comparable to that achieved, in the same amount of time, by an experienced legal writing instructor teaching small groups of students in a more traditional way. On a more advanced memo-writing assignment, meant to explore the `frontier' of the CATO instruction, students taught by the legal writing instructor did better, indicating that more is needed if CATO is to help students to improve their memo-writing skills.