Emotional argumentation, satisfaction level, and meaningful learning in collaborative tasks in electronic discussion forums

The objective of this work is to detect the students' argumentation's characteristics in the process of obtaining a consensus answer to a detonator question in discussion forums and to relate the argumentation with the consensus answer's individual satisfaction level and the superficial and meaningful learning. The participants were six Master Degree students of first semester. Initially there was an argumentation follow-up in 10 discussion forums. A detonator question was shown in each forum. The messages were classified into model of arguments: lineal and chaotic axis, and clinic and emotional axis. Then, a Scale of Satisfaction Level for consensus answer was applied in each discussion forum. The teacher performed small interviews with the students about the success, the problems detected, the solution alternatives found, their emotions, and their learning processes. In all the discussion forums were presented 653 arguments. All the participants showed high rates of lineal and emotional argumentations in comparison to chaotic and clinic argumentations. The greater quantity of arguments and satisfaction level were related in the students' qualitative reports with more meaningful and collaborative learning.