Using Posting Templates for Enhancing Students' Argumentative Elaborations in Learning Villages

Learning Villages (LV) is a game-based computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) platform, which facilitates studentspsila issue-based discussion in a massively multiplayer gaming environment to attain the goal of argumentative knowledge construction. However, such construction can be achieved only if students can make argumentative elaborations properly in order to benefit from CSCL. This paper discusses our research on the use of posting templates to enhance studentspsila argumentative elaborations in LV. Seventy-four fifth-grade students and two of their teachers from two Hong Kong elementary schools participated in the present study. Results confirm that posting templates, to a certain extent, could assist the students in constructing arguments containing reasons and grounds to rationalize and warrant these arguments. In addition to the provision of the posting templates, we also found studentspsila face-to-face peer-sharing (facilitated by the teachers) could help them reach and sustain a relatively higher level of attainment of argumentative knowledge construction.