The effect of argument maps scaffolded with peer feedback on students' argumentation skills

The aim of this study is to explore the effect of argument maps scaffolded with peer feedback on learners' argumentation skills. The participants consisted of 43 (21 female, 22 male) students studying at the Department of Computer Education and Instructional Technologies. Learners were divided into two groups as experiment (n=23) and control (20). The learners in the control group developed individually arguments about teaching methods using argument maps. Similar to the control group, the students in the experimental group first developed the arguments individually with the argument maps. Later, they gave feedback to their peers about the arguments they developed and received feedback from their peers. In the research, it was used mixed research method to investigate how argument maps scaffolded with peer feedback affected learners' argumentation skills. In this line, both quantitative and qualitative analyzes were conducted. Argumentation skills pre-post test scores were used for quantitative analysis, while arguments developed by learners in the argumentation skills posttest and data obtained from the interviews were used for qualitative analysis. The results showed that, both argument maps and argument maps scaffolded with peer feedback improved students' argumentation skills. However, the results also revealed that, argument maps scaffolded with peer feedback was more effective as compared to the argument maps alone. When examining the arguments created by both experimental and control groups in the post test, it is determined that learners in experimental group developed more complex arguments than those in the control group. Learners in both experimental and control groups stated that visualization of arguments with the help of argument maps facilitated the creation and reading of arguments, provided a more comprehensive view of argumentation skills, and provided practicality in constructing arguments.