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Record W4415199566 · doi:10.1111/hequ.70063

Argument Mapping in Higher Education: A Systematic Review

2025· article· en· W4415199566 on OpenAlexafffund
John C. Nesbit, Qing Liu

Bibliographic record

VenueHigher Education Quarterly · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicEducation and Critical Thinking Development
Canadian institutionsSimon Fraser University
FundersSocial Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
KeywordsArgument (complex analysis)Argument mapObservational studyEmpirical researchCritical thinkingVisualizationQuality (philosophy)

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

ABSTRACT Given the emphasis on critical thinking across the undergraduate curricula, research on argument visualisation has significant implications for designing learning activities in higher education. This systematic review examines research on the use of argument maps or diagrams by postsecondary students. The goals were to identify the themes, research questions, and results of systematically identified studies, and to assess the current prospects for meta‐analyses. Relevant databases were searched for qualitative, observational and experimental studies. We coded 124 studies on research design, mapping software, student attitudes, collaborative mapping and thinking skills. There were 102 empirical studies, of which 44% assessed student attitudes toward argument mapping, 40% investigated collaborative argument mapping and 51% examined the quality or structure of student‐constructed argument maps. The causal relationship most frequently investigated was the effect of argument mapping on critical thinking skills. We present the results from selected studies and consider their significance for learning design.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.023
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.095
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Systematic review · Consensus signal: Systematic review
GenreCandidate signal: Review · Consensus signal: Review
Teacher disagreement score0.023
Threshold uncertainty score0.120

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0230.095
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0020.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0070.006
Bibliometrics0.0220.018
Science and technology studies0.0010.002
Scholarly communication0.0030.004
Open science0.0020.002
Research integrity0.0020.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0040.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.035
GPT teacher head0.358
Teacher spread0.323 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designSystematic review
Domainnot available
GenreReview

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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