SUJITH REDDY VARAKANTHAM
2547726
• Introduction
• Arguing with Tests and Hypotheticals
• Study Description
• Results
• Discussion
• Summary and Conclusion
A central goal of education is to train students
to produce robust arguments.
These arguments, not only address the current
problem but also for the problems those arise in
past or in the future.
Teaching argumentation:
Law students are taught to make arguments
through Socratic classroom dialogue.
Socratic method is based on answering and
questioning to stimulate critical thinking
Argumentation by advocates :
Advocates make their arguments by proposing
tests or legal rules to achieve their goals.
To challenge these proposed decision rules, an
opponent or judge may pose hypothetical cases
that may occur, are relevant to the issues of the
argument
Role of diagrams in argumentation:
Argument diagrams can improve students’
ability to produce high class arguments.
Carr, indicated that the production of argument
diagrams can improve students’ ability to
produce high-quality arguments
Role of diagrams in argumentation:
Schank, showed
that the production of
diagrams can improve students' argument
coherence.
The current state of research suggests that
diagrams are a useful educational tool, but
controlled empirical studies are still rare.
LARGO – Legal Argument Graph Observer
The LARGO ITS supports in analyzing oral
argument transcripts.
2006 case study
Two hypothesis based on the results:
Lower aptitude students can gain more
benefits from LARGO than others .
Additional experience with the system will
improve students’ use and benefit of it.
• Asahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court case.
• This involve a court in one state attempting to
assert power over a non-resident of that state.
• Student’s argument on Asahi case.
A student diagram for the Asahi Argument:
Description of student diagram:
In the above diagram, there are links and nodes.
Nodes are used to explain the test case making
use of advise function.
Links are used to indicate the relations between
these nodes.
2007 case study to evaluate LARGO.
85 students were assigned for the two study
conditions:
1. Experimental group
2. The control group
The experimental group used a graphical
version of LARGO that supported diagram
creation and gave advice.
The control group made use of a text version
that offered no feedback.
The curriculum consisted of six weekly two-hour
sessions.
The students took a multiple-choice pre-test.
They took a post-test consisting of multiplechoice and free answer questions.
Post -Test only results
Counter balanced Results
There were no significant differences between
the 2 conditions w.r.t post-test only test items.
These results seemingly contradict our 2006
results.
These results seem to indicate that LARGO’s
advice was a key factor in the positive effects
that we observed in 2006.
The study results did not confirm our initial
hypotheses.
The LARGO is used as a mandatory part of a
legal process.
This process did not lead to learning gains when
compared to a simple note-taking tool.
The possible ways of accounting these
differences:
Student motivation
Engagement with the system
Post-test design
The extent to which users engage with a system
depends on their specific goals.
In 2006 the users were volunteers paid for their
participation.
The success or failure of an ITS depends on the
extent to which users actually use features.
The low use of the LARGO advice functions
effects the study conditions.
The LARGO students who used the advice more
frequently did better at some LARGO important
post-test questions.
The current version of LARGO leaves many
things to the users.
Example for students’ failure.
• A large number of students’ graphs had errors
of a type that could be corrected with help.
Redesigning LARGO.
• Presenting corrective feedback immediately
after they make a mistake.
An alternative for this method.
• This can be done by highlighting diagram
regions on which LARGO could give feedback.
Future version of LARGO
• Engage students more in actually making
arguments in addition to analyzing them.
Expectations of advice usage.
Is Post-test design failed in measurement?
Usage of graphs created by the students
Testing graphs Vs Texts
Result
Assumptions of prior research on LARGO.
No evidence to prove this.
Low LSAT score students benefited from graphs.
Conclusion from this study.
Changes to current on-demand Feedback.
Students’ motivation-a decisive factor