Grasping Evidence with EDDiE: A CSCL Tool to Support Collaborative Reasoning about Disagreements in Multiple Documents

Abstract

We have developed and investigated a web-based CSCL system to support students as they analyze multiple controversial documents. The application, “EDDiE” (Electronic Documents Disagreements Evaluation), allows students to interactively create a visual representation of information from multiple conflicting documents in order to resolve disagreements among the documents. The design is based on the Grasp of Evidence (GoE) Framework (Duncan et al., 2018). Using EDDiE, students collaboratively analyze and compare the quantity and quality of evidence (including testimony by knowledgeable sources) for different claims. In a preliminary study, EDDiE’s epistemic scaffolds promoted productive epistemic discourse.