Organization of the argumentative text in a blended-learning environment

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.