Computer-based Reasoning Systems: an Overview

Argumentation is nowadays seen both as skill that people use in various aspects of their lives, as well as an educational technique that can support the transfer or creation of knowledge thus aiding in the development of other skills (e.g. Communication, critical thinking) or attitudes. However, teaching argumentation and teaching with argumentation is still a rare practice, mostly due to the lack of available resources such as time or expert human tutors that are specialized in argumentation. Intelligent Computer Systems (i.e. Systems that implement an inner representation of particular knowledge and try to emulate the behavior of humans) could allow more people to understand the purpose, techniques and benefits of argumentation. The proposed paper investigates the state of the art concepts of computer-based argumentation used in education and tries to develop a conceptual map, showing benefits, limitation and relations between various concepts focusing on the duality “learning to argue – arguing to learn”.