USING POSTING TEMPLATES FOR ENHANCING STUDENTS’ ARGUMENTATIVE ELABORATIONS IN COMPUTER-SUPPORTED COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY LEARNING

Abstract

Learning Villages (LV) is a computer-supported collaborative inquiry learning (CSCIL) platform, which facilitates students’ issue-based discussion in a massively multiplayer online role-play gaming (MMORPG) environment to attain the goal of argumentative knowledge construction. Regarding argumentative knowledge construction, it can be achieved only if students are able to make argumentative elaborations properly in the discussion process. This paper discusses a study of using posting templates to enhance students’ argumentative elaborations in LV. Seventy-four fifth-grade students and two of their teachers from two Hong Kong elementary schools participated in this study. The results showed that the posting templates proposed in the study, to a certain extent, could empower the students to construct arguments containing reasons and grounds to rationalize and warrant their arguments. In addition to the provision of the posting templates, it was also found the students’ face-to-face peer-sharing (facilitated by the teachers) could help them reach and retain a relatively higher level of attainment of argumentative elaborations in CSCIL.