Abstract:

Nowadays, ICTs are making possible newer tools to successfully carry out debates. Classical forums have evolved to improve the way in which students contributions are arranged. This allows structured debates, easy to follow, without the need of moderators and in which students can show their level of agreement. The main advantage is that all the students can participate simultaneously. In this sense, debates are a well-know teaching resource for both revealing weaknesses on the knowledge building and fixing them. This work explores one of these debate tools and its impact in classroom. This teaching resource encourage students to learn in the right sequence: first a question to solve is posed by teachers and so the educational challenge is established, then students look for the required piece of information. If the debate question is properly defined, it will generate a chain of argued solutions with new questions going deeply in the topic to study. Students can send proposals (solutions), argue about them (opinions), and show their level of agreement (votes). Typically, teachers can evaluate them by sending their votes for every contribution. Then, all the students are automatically assessed. The study throws two main conclusions. On the one hand, the tool has a positive effect in the learning process. On the other hand, assessments of debates differ from other valuable academic activities.

Keywords:

Debate, decision-making, cooperative/collaborative learning, eParticipation.