In this paper, we discuss design considerations and our plans to develop a generalized framework for intelligent support in educational argumentation systems. Our goal is to develop a framework that will support the development of argumentation learning systems across a variety of domains (e.g., the law, ethics).

While argumentation is highly important for humans in many different aspects of life, it is hard to teach large groups to argue. Classic face-to-face approaches, which have shown to be effective, are limited by personal and time issues. Thus there were attempts to support the learning of argumentation via collaboration tools and intelligent tutoring systems. A detailed review of about 50 argumentation systems indicated a lack of research on the architectural side as well as on the side of collaboration. This thesis will investigate how a generic, customizable software architecture and configurable flexible collaboration options can be used to support the learning of argumentation in different domains.

Supporting students in the acquisition of argumentation skills is an important goal of educational technology. However, there has not been much work done towards developing generic and reusable software architectures for collaborative argumentation that could reduce the development time for distributed argumentation learning systems. Based on a survey of more than 50 different argumentation systems, this paper presents a requirements analysis for a generic collaborative intelligent tutoring system for argumentation.