Designing sentence templates in computer-supported collaborative learning

Abstract

Communication activities play a critical role to build constructed knowledge in collaborative learning situation. Learners can have effective communication not only by actively participating in discussion but also by presenting the ideas clearly. Argumentation is a clear and logical ways to express one’s opinion. Sentence openers were exploited in several studies to support learner’s argumentation. Sentence openers are the pre-defined ways to start a sentence, for example, I think…, I agree with your idea… etc. However, those sentence openers only focused on how to start a sentence. It does not have to do with how to make proper sequence of sentences. Thus, based on Toulmin’s argument model, we extend the sentence openers and propose sentence template which is combination of sentence opener and writing template to foster learners’ argumentative knowledge and to enhance the quality of argument, therefore reaching a fruitful shared understanding.