This study investigates whether combining chat discussion and construction of an argument diagram stimulates students to formulate new ideas in practising argumentation. In this study, 16 secondary school students discussed vivisection and gender equality in pairs using both free and structured chat tools. In structured chat, the students selected…

Within a synchronous computer-mediated discussion, teachers used a prescriptive framework of Socratic interventions together with dialogue moves which challenged students to justify their opinions or which presented a devil's advocate line of counter-argument. This paper examines the effectiveness of different teacher strategies and presents…