Designing for Internal vs. External Discourse in Groupware for Developing Critical Discussion Skills

Groupware for learning may differ from that for other software in a crucial way: optimizing software support for subtasks can degrade overall collaborative learning. This point is illustrated in the context of a software environment for supporting student’s learning to engage in critical discussion of competing scientific theories. Our experience suggests that in applications where a nontrivial portion of the discourse is external to the software, some exceptions to locally useful interface designs may be encountered, even for supposedly well understood subtasks.