How Tough should it be? Simplifying the Development of Argumentation Systems Using a Configurable Platform

Teaching to argue is challenging. Classic face-to-face approaches do not scale up for large groups due to resource limitations (teacher time), but have shown to be effective. As a consequence, there have been attempts to convey argumentation skills via educational software. Even though some of these systems have shown their suitability in their original domains of application, the systems typically do not generalize – there has been little carry over to other domains. This chapter reviews existing approaches, their technological strengths and weaknesses and proposes a generic architecture to overcome the latter. Based on this architecture, the LASAD (Learning to Argue – Generalized Support Across Domains) framework has been developed. The goal of this framework is to simplify the development of argumentation systems based on some well-defined configurations. In this chapter, we describe the flexibility of the LASAD framework and demonstrate how it can be configured to emulate the existing argumentation systems Belvedere and LARGO.

Keywords: Architectures, argument diagramming, collaborative learning, collaborative frameworks, collaborative tools, component based system, discussion, discussion-enhanced systems.