Arguing to learn and learning to argue in second life

Toulmin's argumentation ontology is revisited and seen in a new light with a view to developing Higher Education students' argumentation skills in a Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE), Second Life. The methodology applied takes Toulmin's focus on the micro-structure of the argument (the intra-relationship of argument components) as its starting point and extends it to reach the argument macro-structure (inter-relationship of chain of arguments). The vehicle to argue forward combining inter and intra-argument relationships is De Bono's Six Thinking Hats strategy. The added value of the resultant framework is a flexible, non tool-bound, domain-independent framework that addresses all stakeholders either wishing to teach their target audience argumentation skills or be taught and transfer those skills and framework to new real-life academic or business settings.