Considering students’ epistemic beliefs to facilitate their argumentative discourse and attitudinal change with a digital dialogue game

This study explores whether and how higher education students with various epistemic beliefs engage in argumentative discourse and shift their attitude within a digital dialogue game. Students were assigned to groups of four or five and asked to argue and explore various perspectives of four controversial issues of environmental education in four consecutive weeks that each lasted 90 min. The results showed the digital dialogue game can guide students towards a desired mode of interaction and argumentative discourse. Students’ epistemic beliefs were seen to be an important factor for their attitudinal change. Furthermore, students’ epistemic beliefs contributed to their style and frequency of particular types of argumentative discourse. Multiplists engaged in argumentative discourse activities differently than Evaluativists during the argumentative discourse. Explanations for these results, implications, limitations and suggestions for future work are provided.