Research, Reflections and Innovations in Integrating ICT in Education

Organization of the argumentative text in a blended-learning

environment
A. de Sousa de Pinho** and L. Álvares Pereira2**
1
Escola EB 2, 3/S de Vale de Cambra (School of 2nd and 3rd Cycles of Basic Education of Vale de Cambra),
Búzio, 3730-901 Vale de Cambra, Portugal.
2
Department of Didactics and Educational Technology, University of Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago,
3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal.

This study focuses on a central question: “What strategies do students’ use and what difficulties do they feel when
organising, in note form, written argumentative texts?” while simultaneously exploring constructivism and on-line
collaborative pair work (dyads).
The objective is to observe the practices and difficulties felt by students at the University of Aveiro when working
on written argumentative texts, focusing essentially on the levels of reading, selection and organisation of
information in these texts, within a blended-learning environment.
Simultaneously, we attempt to evaluate the contribution given by the SCALE platform which was designed and
developed with the purpose of supporting the collaborative learning of argumentative competences.
In the light of this objective, several activities were implemented: (i) on-line debates in pairs; (ii) on-line
individual graphic representation of argumentative maps in the form of diagrams; (iii) individual note-taking and
written production in an off-line environment.

Keywords b-Learning; written argumentative text; SCALE’s platform; on-line collaborative work; note-taking;
academic writing

1.Contextualization

Nowadays, at a time when information grows at an intense rate, it is vital that individuals learn how to
appropriate such information in order to transform it. As stated by Roerden, «the information age requires
different skills. Students need to know how to think critically, synthetize large amounts of information, and
apply concepts learned with a global perspective.» [1]. For that purpose, it is essential to learn to interpret,
select, organise and use such information as only in this manner will it be possible to produce knowledge.
However, this does not seem to be the most common attitude within current education. In classroom contexts,
students are frequently limited to collecting and storing the information which is transmitted, without any degree
of structuring or organising, and which they cannot assimilate correctly due to a number of lacks diagnosed,
especially concerning reading and writing competences [2].
Additionally, in many situations, the teacher is still a mere transmitter of the information which is perceived
as being important for the students. And, in this evaluation of what is or what is not important, the students’
sensibility, the most important part of the process, is not taken into consideration. In this approach, the
transmission and storage of information is preferred over the processing of the latter, a competence which, due
to its complexity, requires a deeper and more extensive learning on the part of the student-writers [3]. If one
should add to this the growing massification of the student population, it is not difficult to conclude that the
teaching model which has been implemented, in the majority of the classrooms within higher education, is no
longer sustainable. What then are the solutions?
One of the possible answers seems to lie in on-line teaching [4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9], which encompasses, from an
explicitly constructivist approach, multiple opportunities for the learner to synthesise, organise and restructure
the information which, in the case of a more objectivist perspective of traditional teaching, is simply organised
and transmitted by the teacher. In this sense, Pinto [10] defends that there is an «absolute need for evolution
towards systems/environments of hybrid teaching. In other words, towards solutions which combine physical
sessions, with complementary distance learning, which is a strong substitute for the first […].» [10:31].
On the other hand, in an increasingly global and competitive society, where persuasion takes on a relevant
role, argumentative competence is one of the most valued competences not only for the purpose of school and
academic assignments, but also in the most varied professional, political or economic scenarios. As Simonet
states, « on ne peut pas ne pas argumenter.» [11:13]. It is also based upon argumentation that a considerable part
of the construction of knowledge takes place [12], due to dialogism, reflexion, processing and appropriation of

* Corresponding author e-mail: apinho@dte.ua.pt, Phone: +351912389574.

** Corresponding author e-mail: lpereira@ua.pt, Phone: +351919097145.

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the information required for the purpose of argumentation. It is also worth noting that within higher education,
learning is evaluated, especially, through expositive and/or argumentative writing [13]. Despite that, many
teachers fail to acknowledge that the ability to explore argumentative texts is better developed through writing
than through oral discourse [13], which ends up having ruinous results at the level of academic writing too [12].
Along the same line of thought, Brassart [14] demonstrated that a didactic intervention at the level of more
specific aspects of the argumentative text would contribute towards the promotion of a faster development of the
argumentative competence, essential not only, but also, to academic success. This statement reflects the
conclusions which other specialists of academic writing have arrived at, throughout recent years [15, 16, 17].
Simultaneously, research seems to growingly perceive writing practices as a form of constructing knowledge,
both at the level of reception and of construction [18, 3, 19, 20]. Considering the commitment of higher
education to promote the development of critical thinking, as far as possible, in each student, it takes on an
unquestionably important role within this context. Hence, the teaching and learning of the argumentative text
make come to play an essential and indispensable role, given its importance in the (re)construction of thought
and of knowledge in general [12]. Besides this, if we consider that Note-Taking (NT) is one of the privileged
means of access for many university students, the easier it becomes to understand the important role that this
other writing has within education.
The majority of studies have preferred to focus on students’ notes, in classroom contexts, which result from
oral discourse [18, 20] and not from written texts. As we know, written documents (namely papers, books,
theses, magazines) are also an indispensable and very important source of knowledge in higher education.
Consequently, the way in which students take notes from such sources also deserves close observation given
that a significant part of their success depends upon this practice.
In this way, teachers in higher education should teach students to collect, select and organise information, to
defend a position, an idea, a thesis or any other type of academic assignment, all of which constitute
indispensable abilities in the construction of a more aware, conscious and transforming mind which, due to such
characteristics, will contribute towards more satisfactory academic and professional experiences.

2.Methodology

It is important to highlight that the corpus of part of the study here described was complementarily developed by
two parallel studies: one of the studies (led by another researcher) was more directed towards the analysis of
written productions, and the other, connected to the work presented in this paper, and more focused on the
analysis and description of procedures and difficulties of university students, at the level of the selection and
organisation of the information in written argumentative texts, on the SCALE platform, which we shall now
briefly describe.

2.1 The SCALE platform: brief description

The SCALE platform has various tools: i) the free Chat, similar to common Chat rooms; ii) the CHAT
ESTRUTURADO (STRUCTURED CHAT) or ALEX (where the dialogic interaction is guided according to the
choice of four models used at the beginning of sentences with the most common expressions used for the
purposes of debate – opining, arguing, explaining, commenting – which students are expected to complete; iii)
the JigaDREW (an Internet tool used in the visual representation of debates, in order to automatically or
manually create argumentative graphs of each Chat session); v) the EDITOR DE TEXTO (TEXT EDITOR)
(which helps to create individual or collaborative texts). Besides these tools, SCALE includes other
complementary tools, included in the teacher’s module, which have the purpose of supporting the analysis of the
learning process. This is the case of the Pedagogical Web Site (PWS), a web portal for teachers who intend to
develop students’ argumentative abilities, contains the software elements and all the help considered necessary
for the creation and use of learning sequences, as well as tools to evaluate students’ argumentative competences
and analyse the quality of the work produced.

2.2 Main methodological strategies and objectives

The methodology adopted for the purpose of this research is of a descriptive type and focused, essentially, on
the process of writing argumentative texts, taking into account the selection, organisation and dialogic
negotiation of the information, developed within the SCALE environment (complemented by the physical
environment and Blackboard platform). For this purpose, an operative, collaborative and reflexive perspective
was adopted.

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Considering that NT can be considered an intermediate/utilitarian “text” between the source-text (ST) and the
target-text (TT) (written productions), for its analysis to be complete, it is necessary to consider not only the
way in which the information was read and selected, but also the way in which it was later organised (NT),
reused/integrated in the students final written productions (TT).
The sixteen individuals involved in this study worked on the argumentative texts during three distinct
moments: the first, a diagnostic phase, consisted in the NT and in the production of an off-line opinion article,
based on the readings of written argumentative texts (1st session); during the second moment, two more
sessions, on-line, with a duration of two hours each, were promoted, during which pedagogical activities
considered favourable to the organisation of the information in the argumentative text were carried out (Free
Chat and SCALE Grapher); during the third and last moment, i.e. after the empirical work, tasks similar to those
developed during the first moment were carried out in an off-line context.
For the compilation and discussion of the results, we analysed some questionnaires at the beginning and at the
end of the experiment, the students’ on-line argumentative diagrams and interactions, as well as their individual
written productions (taking notes and opinion articles). Given that note-taking can be perceived as an
intermediate/utilitarian “text” between source text (reading texts) and target text (writing productions), its
analysis involved not only the way information was read and selected, but also the way it was
(re)used/integrated in the writing production requested (opinion article).

3. Results

Obtained, mainly, from writing produced and logs, results reflect some potentialities of SCALE concerning
reflexion, meta-cognition and organisation of argumentative written texts. Results simultaneously express
students’ difficulties in the reading, selection and organisation of this type of text, especially in the areas of
synthesis, criticism, structure of information and distance. All these difficulties are observable through non-
systematic and excessively transferred note-taking from the source text, and, consequently, non-communicative
and/or reusable, in the medium or long term, by the note-taker, with all the consequences which result at the
level of knowledge appropriation.

3.1 Face-to-face work

3.1.1 Source-text: note-taking movement

The analysis of students’ written productions (note taking and opinion texts) allowed us to observe that there is a
significant number of notes which are little more than a copy of information from the source-text(s) (ST), which
seems to point towards specific difficulties, namely concerning the management and transformation of the
content collected. Many of the notes were also limited to a list of unrelated ideas, without a defined
argumentative strategy, jeopardising the coherence and meaning of the information collected and, consequently,
leading to difficulties, or even to the impossibility, of understanding the content dealt with in the source-text(s).
At the end of the empirical work, the number of misunderstandings of the message of the ST decreased,
considering that the ambiguity had also been reduced, from the beginning to the end of the experiment, although
in a lesser degree. As a matter of fact, the negative impact of the causes which generated the ambiguity of many
of the NT was largely reduced after the empirical work.
If we consider that the exchange of opinions is, in general, more present in interactions, we may also
conclude that this variable may have contributed towards the improvement in the quality of the written
productions, in which case one can add the advantage of a greater familiarisation, throughout the course of the
experiment, with the theme under discussion: the NGO and hunger in the world.
The difficulties which contributed towards a more deficient quality in the notes taken by a significant number
of students are of different types: deficiencies at the level of the thematic progression, the articulation and
cohesion of discourse and of the choice and ordering of arguments; use, in some cases, of an inappropriate
register considering the objective, context and receiver defined; deficient blending of information
simultaneously selected from the different texts; notes lacking systemisation, or being synoptical and/or
systematised, hence evincing difficulties at the level of the analysis, synthesis and organisation of the
information collected from the source text(s).

3.1.2 Note-taking: target-text movement

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With regards to the NT-TT movement, the majority of the participants demonstrated a general tendency to
literally copy the annotated information.
Consequently, in most cases, the notes seem to play the role of a mere recipient and archive of information,
instead of being a trampoline and motto for the deeper and more personal reflexion and development of the
information collected, as would be desirable.
On the other hand, in a significant number of argumentative texts written by the students, the arguments are
piled up without any sort of gradation and/or hierarchy, being presented, most of the times, in the order in which
they were collected from the ST, which seems to point, once again, towards the difficulties related to the
creation of distance from the information read, as well as the respective appropriation and/or transformation.
Textual unity and continuity therefore give way, in many cases, to a fragmented collection and arrangement of
the information, which raises difficulties in understanding the meaning of what has been written.
We were able to observe that the students who participated in this study generally revealed a number of
difficulties in circulating in and among argumentative texts, both at the level of their reception as well as at the
level of their production.

3.2 Online work

3.2.1 Collaborative work

Concerning the on-line collaborative work, excluding one or another case in which some resistance was
revealed, the students seem, in general, to have adhered well to this type of work.
On the other hand, collaborative work seems to have promoted a greater autonomy in the students, evinced by a
greater awareness of their personal learning process and learner characteristics, which seems to have
encouraged, in some way, the development of competences at the level of the management of the learning
process in itself.
After the empirical work, changes at the level of students’ perceptions of reading and writing were registered,
namely: many of the students felt more confident about the majority of the reading competences evaluated; in
contrast, with regard to writing competences, the participants’ levels of confidence decreased with respect to the
majority of the competences, if we exclude the systemization and organisation of the information and the
efficient use of notes, areas in which students felt more secure, after the empirical work.
On the other hand, we also observed that the performances on-line and off-line rarely coincided in terms of
quality. In other words, some students with a good on-line performance had a less positive performance off-line
and vice-versa.
The analysis of this data allowed, on the one hand, to conclude that working practices concerning
argumentative writing, in on-line environments and from a processual perspective, had some positive outcomes
for some students, as some of the experiences posted by the participants on the Blackboard forum reveal.

3.2.2 Impact of the SCALE platform on student’s learning

In spite of the adhesion of the majority of students to the SCALE platform and on-line collaborative work, we
did not observe, contrary to our initial expectations, significant differences between on-line and off-line
performances, in which written texts were very similar, before and after the empirical work.
According to some results, SCALE seems, however, to have contributed towards a better learning of how to
write argumentative texts (due, in part, to the free chat available on the platform), simultaneously contributing
towards a deeper reflexion and awareness of the organisation of this text type, due to Grapher’s schematisation.
SCALE also seems to have positively influenced students’ attitudes relating to some writing and argumentation
abilities, after the work was carried out.
Collaborative work and on-line interactions on SCALE can be a good complement to face-to-face activities,
because it can facilitate and stimulate the writing of argumentative texts and, consequently, contribute towards a
better learning of this type of text, as the results from this experiment seem to sustain.

3.Conclusions

Considering the outcomes of this work, it seems that the SCALE platform will have, in some way, contributed
towards a clearer and more constructive learning of the argumentative text. Simultaneously, it seems to have
encouraged a deeper reflexion and awareness, at the level of organisation, according to the schematic structure

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imposed by the Grapher tool, simultaneously promoted by the opportunities of verbal and personal opportunities
of interaction on SCALE’s free Chat.
Additionally, the SCALE tools seem to have positively influenced the students’ attitudes concerning some
writing and argumentative abilities, given that the comparative analysis of some of the students’ answers in the
questionnaires, before and after the experiment, seem to reveal a clearer perception of their abilities in the case
of both competences.
It is also worth highlighting that, after the experiment, many students felt even more confident about the
majority of the reading competences evaluated; in contrast, in the case of writing competences, participants’
confidence decreased in most cases, if we exclude the systemisation and organisation of the information and the
efficient use of notes, areas in which students felt more secure after the empirical work.
This fact seems to result from the promotion of collaborative work given that it brings about more
opportunities for dialogue and metalinguistic and processual reflexion, allowing for the development of the
ability to learn and, at the same time, a greater awareness of students’ real abilities and difficulties. In truth, the
on-line assignments seem to have favoured a positive and enriching interaction among the majority of the
students.
Additionally, the platform and the on-line environment allowed greater transparency and visibility of some of
the stages of the process underlying the construction of the argumentative text, hence facilitating the
identification of some of the difficulties felt and strategies used by the students, indispensible to the construction
of an efficient didactics of this text type.
Considering the numerous difficulties identified concerning the students’ ability to deal with the reception
and production of written argumentative texts, we finally concluded that it is fundamental to adopt and
implement, within the classroom context, several activities which assist students in deconstructing this text type
by means of a more localised didactic intervention, centred on its different characteristics and constitutive
elements.
On the other hand, this study showed us that it is fundamental to implement and develop within higher
education, an explicit teaching of writing, imposing a new dynamics, within the classroom context, where the
learning process is carried out with the student before being done for the student. And this is where collaborative
working and b-Learning environments can be of precious help.

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