Socratic strategies and devil's advocacy in synchronous CMC debate.

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Computer Assisted Learning Vol. 20; no. 3; pp. 172 - 183
Main Author: Walker SA
Format: research tables/charts Journal Article
Published: Wiley-Blackwell Jun2004
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Description
Summary: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 examples of those strategies in use. The research found that, although teachers used relatively few 'counter-argument' moves, these moves could be particularly successful in encouraging students to develop and defend a line of argument.