Learning of argumentation skills in networked and face-to-face environments

In a teaching experiment 16 face-to-face and 11 e-mail Finnish university students studied academic debating in an argumentation course. The 19 students of the control group did not engage in the course. The course involved two lectures, exercises with argumentative texts, and face-to-fact or e-mail seminar discussions based on these texts. Free debate, role play, problem-solving and panel discussion were the devices used in organizing the course. The level of the students' argumentation skills were measured in a pretest before the course and in a post-test after it. The results were compared between and within the groups. The res ults indicated that during the e-mail studies the students learned to identify and choose relevant grounds, while the face-to-face students improved in putting forward counterargumentation. The control group did not improve in these skills. The study suggests that argumentation skills can be promoted by short-term e-mail and face-to-face reaching, and that practising argumentation in different learning environments develops different kinds of argumentation skills.