Modified bargaining protocols for automated negotiation in open multi-agent systems

Current research in multi-agent systems (MAS) has advanced to the development of open MAS, which are characterized by the heterogeneity of agents, free exit/entry and decentralized control. Conflicts of interest among agents are inevitable, and hence automated negotiation to resolve them is one of the promising solutions. This thesis studies three modifications on alternating-offer bargaining protocols for automated negotiation in open MAS. The long-term goal of this research is to design negotiation protocols which can be easily used by intelligent agents in accommodating their need in resolving their conflicts. In particular, we propose three modifications: allowing non-monotonic offers during the bargaining (non-monotonic-offers bargaining protocol), allowing strategic delay (delay-based bargaining protocol), and allowing strategic ignorance to augment argumentation when the bargaining comprises argumentation (ignorance-based argumentation-based negotiation protocol). Utility theory and decision-theoretic approaches are used in the theoretical analysis part, with an aim to prove the benefit of these three modifications in negotiation among myopic agents under uncertainty. Empirical studies by means of computer simulation are conducted in analyzing the cost and benefit of these modifications. Social agents, who use common human bargaining strategies, are the subjects of the simulation. In general, we assume that agents are bounded rational with various degrees of belief and trust toward their opponents. In particular in the study of the non-monotonic-offers bargaining protocol, we assume that our agents have diminishing surplus. We further assume that our agents have increasing surplus in the study of delay-based bargaining protocol. And in the study of ignorance-based argumentation-based negotiation protocol, we assume that agents may have different knowledge and use different ontologies and reasoning engines. Through theoretical analysis under various settings, we show the benefit of allowing these modifications in terms of agents’ expected surplus. And through simulation, we show the benefit of allowing these modifications in terms of social welfare (total surplus). Several implementation issues are then discussed, and their potential solutions in terms of some additional policies are proposed. Finally, we also suggest some future work which can potentially improve the reliability of these modifications

Les systèmes d'argumentation basés sur les préférences : application à la décision et à la négociation

L'argumentation est considérée comme un modèle de raisonnement basé sur la construction et l'évaluation d'arguments. Ces derniers sont sensés soutenir/expliquer/attaquer des assertions qui peuvent être des décisions, des avis, etc... Cette thèse contient trois parties. La première concerne la notion d'équivalence de systèmes d'argumentation. Nous avons proposé différents critères d'équivalence, étudié leurs liens et montré sous quelles conditions deux systèmes sont équivalents selon les critères proposés. La notion d'équivalence est ensuite utilisée pour calculer les noyaux d'un système d'argumentation. Un noyau est un sous-système fini d'un système d'argumentation et équivalent à celui-ci. La deuxième partie de la thèse concerne l'utilisation des préférences dans l'argumentation. Nous avons étudié les rôles que les préférences peuvent jouer dans un système d'argumentation. Deux rôles particuliers ont été identifiés. Nous avons montré que les travaux existant ont abordé seulement le premier rôle et les approches proposées peuvent retourner des résultats contre-intuitifs lorsque la relation d'attaque entre arguments n'est pas symétrique. Nous avons développé une approche qui pallie ces limites. La troisième partie applique notre modèle d'argumentation à la décision et à la négociation. Nous avons proposé une instanciation de notre modèle pour la décision argumentée. Puis, nous avons étudié la dynamique de cette instanciation. Plus précisément, nous avons montré comment le statut des options change à la lumière d'un nouvel argument. Nous avons également employé notre modèle afin de montrer les avantages de l'argumentation dans des dialogues de négociation.Argumentation is a promising approach for reasoning with uncertain or incoherent knowledge or more generally with common sense knowledge. It consists of constructing arguments and counter-arguments, comparing the different arguments and selecting the most acceptable among them. This thesis contains three parts. The first one concerns the notion of equivalence between two argumentation frameworks. We studied two families of equivalence: basic equivalence and strong equivalence. We proposed different equivalence criteria, investigated their links and showed under which conditions two frameworks are equivalent w.r.t. each of the proposed criteria. The notion of equivalence is then used in order to compute the core(s) of an argumentation framework. A core of a framework is its compact version, i.e. an equivalent sub-framework. The second part of the thesis concerns the use of preferences in argumentation. We investigated the roles that preferences may play in an argumentation framework. Two particular roles were identified. Besides, we showed that almost all the existing works have tackled only the first role. Moreover, the proposed approaches suffer from a drawback which consists of returning conflicting extensions. We proposed a general approach which solves this problem and takes into account both roles of preferences. The third part illustrates our preference-based argumentation frameworks (PAF) in case of decision making and negotiation. We proposed an instantiation of our PAF which rank-orders options in a decision making problem and studied the dynamics of this model. We also used our PAF in order to show the benefits of arguing in negotiation dialogues

Negotiating Socially Optimal Allocations of Resources with Argumentation

The resource allocation problem of multi-agent systems is the problem of deciding how to allocate resources, controlled by agents, to agents within a given system. Agents typically have preferences over alternative allocations of resources. These preferences may be derived from the agents’ goals, which can be fulfilled by different plans (sets of resources). The problem arises because agents may not be able to fulfil their goals without being re-allocated resources controlled by other agents and agents may have conflicting preferences over allocations. Examples of the resource allocation problem include electronic commerce (where resources are commodities equipped with prices), the grid (where resources are computational entities equipped with computational power), and scheduling and timetabling (where resources may be tasks with costs). The focus in this thesis is distributed decision-making amongst agents, whereby agents actively participate in computing re-allocations, starting from initial allocations which may or may not fulfil their goals. A re-allocation is arrived at by means of local negotiation steps wherein resources change hands between the agents involved in the negotiations. The negotiation method of choice in this thesis is argumentation-based negotiation supported by assumption-based argumentation. This method allows agents to work towards their goals despite incomplete information regarding the goals of and resources allocated to other agents, to share knowledge, thereby eliminating unknowns, and to resolve conflicts within themselves and between one another which may arise because of inconsistent information. Solutions generated by a resource allocation mechanism may be ranked according to how they affect the individual welfare of the agents as well as the overall social welfare of the agent society, according to different notions of social welfare borrowed from economics. The argumentation-based negotiation mechanism we propose guarantees, for the problem domain of interest in this thesis, that negotiations between agents always terminate converging to a solution. Moreover, the mechanism guarantees that solutions reached optimise the welfare of the individual agents as well as the agent society as a whole according to Pareto optimal and utilitarian notions of social welfare

A Rational Scheme for Conflict Detection and Resolution in Distributed Collaborative Environments for Enterprise Integration

A typical enterprise may have large numbers of information sources such as data stores, expert systems, knowledge-based systems, or standard software systems. These may need to be integrated so that, for example, an application program or a decision maker can access information from all these sources. Such architectures are generally called 'Distributed Collaborative Environments for Enterprise Integration'. A general problem in these enterprise integration architectures is that information from heterogeneous, pre-existing sources may be obsolete, incomplete, incorrect or, for many other reasons, contradictory. Thus, conflicting results may occur when the same information is requested from semantically related sources. A mechanism is required to detect and resolve these conflicts in a way that is rational to any potential client of the integration environment. This thesis lays open the design of a general mechanism for conflict detection and resolution that enables intelligent information agents to reason about contradictory information from pre-existing, heterogeneous and autonomous sources. The mechanism's theoretical basis is a framework that is drawn from evidence law, which shares some fundamental commonalities with conflict detection and resolution in enterprise integration environments. Conflict detection opens with gathering the results collected by the information retrieval process. These results may have justifications or certainty assessments attached to them. Furthermore, it identifies whether and how these results are conflicting. The design of a conflict resolution mechanism is based on a rational scheme for judging the weight of conflicting results. First, the agents assess the reliability or credibility of an information source. Judgement based on the weight of conflicting results is first applied to any available, domain-specific, resolution strategies. Second, the agent applies any 'general scientific' resolution strategies that are not specific to one domain. When no domain-related expertise can solve the conflict then the agent can only judge on domain independent evaluation criteria such as the results' reliability. A scheme is sketched out for judgement based on the reliability of conflicting results, involving three steps: Ranking the conflicting results according to their reliability; Ways to redefine conflicting results; and Heuristic decision-making. The evaluation includes a computational implementation of an enterprise integration environment incorporating a model of an information agent. An example is realised in this environment. The conflict detection and resolution mechanism, and interfaces to each integrated source, are implemented in Visual C++. A case study is conducted on this scenario to evaluate each conflict detection and resolution step. Furthermore, this illustrates both the advantages over existing approaches and the limitations

A Cooperative Approach for Composite Ontology Matching

Ontologies have proven to be an essential element in a range of applications in which knowl-edge plays a key role. Resolving the semantic heterogeneity problem is crucial to allow the interoperability between ontology-based systems. This makes automatic ontology matching, as an anticipated solution to semantic heterogeneity, an important, research issue. Many dif-ferent approaches to the matching problem have emerged from the literature. An important issue of ontology matching is to find effective ways of choosing among many techniques and their variations, and then combining their results. An innovative and promising option is to formalize the combination of matching techniques using agent-based approaches, such as cooperative negotiation and argumentation. In this thesis, the formalization of the on-tology matching problem following an agent-based approach is proposed. Such proposal is evaluated using state-of-the-art data sets. The results show that the consensus obtained by negotiation and argumentation represent intermediary values which are closer to the best matcher. As the best matcher may vary depending on specific differences of multiple data sets, cooperative approaches are an advantage. *** RESUMO - Ontologias são elementos essenciais em sistemas baseados em conhecimento. Resolver o problema de heterogeneidade semântica é fundamental para permitira interoperabilidade entre sistemas baseados em ontologias. Mapeamento automático de ontologias pode ser visto como uma solução para esse problema. Diferentes e complementares abordagens para o problema são propostas na literatura. Um aspecto importante em mapeamento consiste em selecionar o conjunto adequado de abordagens e suas variações, e então combinar seus resultados. Uma opção promissora envolve formalizara combinação de técnicas de ma-peamento usando abordagens baseadas em agentes cooperativos, tais como negociação e argumentação. Nesta tese, a formalização do problema de combinação de técnicas de ma-peamento usando tais abordagens é proposta e avaliada. A avaliação, que envolve conjuntos de testes sugeridos pela comunidade científica, permite concluir que o consenso obtido pela negociação e pela argumentação não é exatamente a melhoria de todos os resultados individuais, mas representa os valores intermediários que são próximo da melhor técnica. Considerando que a melhor técnica pode variar dependendo de diferencas específicas de múltiplas bases de dados, abordagens cooperativas são uma vantagem

Cognitive architecture of multimodal multidimensional dialogue management

Numerous studies show that participants of real-life dialogues happen to get involved in rather dynamic non-sequential interactions. This challenges the dialogue system designs based on a reactive interlocutor paradigm and calls for dialog systems that can be characterised as a proactive learner, accomplished multitasking planner and adaptive decision maker. Addressing this call, the thesis brings innovative integration of cognitive models into the human-computer dialogue systems. This work utilises recent advances in Instance-Based Learning of Theory of Mind skills and the established Cognitive Task Analysis and ACT-R models. Cognitive Task Agents, producing detailed simulation of human learning, prediction, adaption and decision making, are integrated in the multi-agent Dialogue Man-ager. The manager operates on the multidimensional information state enriched with representations based on domain- and modality-specific semantics and performs context-driven dialogue acts interpretation and generation. The flexible technical framework for modular distributed dialogue system integration is designed and tested. The implemented multitasking Interactive Cognitive Tutor is evaluated as showing human-like proactive and adaptive behaviour in setting goals, choosing appropriate strategies and monitoring processes across contexts, and encouraging the user exhibit similar metacognitive competences

Defeasible Argumentation for Cooperative Multi-Agent Planning

Tesis por compendio[EN] Multi-Agent Systems (MAS), Argumentation and Automated Planning are three lines of investigations within the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that have been extensively studied over the last years. A MAS is a system composed of multiple intelligent agents that interact with each other and it is used to solve problems whose solution requires the presence of various functional and autonomous entities. Multi-agent systems can be used to solve problems that are difficult or impossible to resolve for an individual agent. On the other hand, Argumentation refers to the construction and subsequent exchange (iteratively) of arguments between a group of agents, with the aim of arguing for or against a particular proposal. Regarding Automated Planning, given an initial state of the world, a goal to achieve, and a set of possible actions, the goal is to build programs that can automatically calculate a plan to reach the final state from the initial state. The main objective of this thesis is to propose a model that combines and integrates these three research lines. More specifically, we consider a MAS as a team of agents with planning and argumentation capabilities. In that sense, given a planning problem with a set of objectives, (cooperative) agents jointly construct a plan to satisfy the objectives of the problem while they defeasibly reason about the environmental conditions so as to provide a stronger guarantee of success of the plan at execution time. Therefore, the goal is to use the planning knowledge to build a plan while agents beliefs about the impact of unexpected environmental conditions is used to select the plan which is less likely to fail at execution time. Thus, the system is intended to return collaborative plans that are more robust and adapted to the circumstances of the execution environment. In this thesis, we designed, built and evaluated a model of argumentation based on defeasible reasoning for planning cooperative multi-agent system. The designed system is independent of the domain, thus demonstrating the ability to solve problems in different application contexts. Specifically, the system has been tested in context sensitive domains such as Ambient Intelligence as well as with problems used in the International Planning Competitions.[ES] Dentro de la Inteligencia Artificial (IA), existen tres ramas que han sido ampliamente estudiadas en los últimos años: Sistemas Multi-Agente (SMA), Argumentación y Planificación Automática. Un SMA es un sistema compuesto por múltiples agentes inteligentes que interactúan entre sí y se utilizan para resolver problemas cuya solución requiere la presencia de diversas entidades funcionales y autónomas. Los sistemas multiagente pueden ser utilizados para resolver problemas que son difíciles o imposibles de resolver para un agente individual. Por otra parte, la Argumentación consiste en la construcción y posterior intercambio (iterativamente) de argumentos entre un conjunto de agentes, con el objetivo de razonar a favor o en contra de una determinada propuesta. Con respecto a la Planificación Automática, dado un estado inicial del mundo, un objetivo a alcanzar, y un conjunto de acciones posibles, el objetivo es construir programas capaces de calcular de forma automática un plan que permita alcanzar el estado final a partir del estado inicial. El principal objetivo de esta tesis es proponer un modelo que combine e integre las tres líneas anteriores. Más específicamente, nosotros consideramos un SMA como un equipo de agentes con capacidades de planificación y argumentación. En ese sentido, dado un problema de planificación con un conjunto de objetivos, los agentes (cooperativos) construyen conjuntamente un plan para resolver los objetivos del problema y, al mismo tiempo, razonan sobre la viabilidad de los planes, utilizando como herramienta de diálogo la Argumentación. Por tanto, el objetivo no es sólo obtener automáticamente un plan solución generado de forma colaborativa entre los agentes, sino también utilizar las creencias de los agentes sobre la información del contexto para razonar acerca de la viabilidad de los planes en su futura etapa de ejecución. De esta forma, se pretende que el sistema sea capaz de devolver planes colaborativos más robustos y adaptados a las circunstancias del entorno de ejecución. En esta tesis se diseña, construye y evalúa un modelo de argumentación basado en razonamiento defeasible para un sistema de planificación cooperativa multiagente. El sistema diseñado es independiente del dominio, demostrando así la capacidad de resolver problemas en diferentes contextos de aplicación. Concretamente el sistema se ha evaluado en dominios sensibles al contexto como es la Inteligencia Ambiental y en problemas de las competiciones internacionales de planificación.[CA] Dins de la intel·ligència artificial (IA), hi han tres branques que han sigut àmpliament estudiades en els últims anys: Sistemes Multi-Agent (SMA), Argumentació i Planificació Automàtica. Un SMA es un sistema compost per múltiples agents intel·ligents que interactúen entre si i s'utilitzen per a resoldre problemas la solución dels quals requereix la presència de diverses entitats funcionals i autònomes. Els sistemes multiagente poden ser utilitzats per a resoldre problemes que són difícils o impossibles de resoldre per a un agent individual. D'altra banda, l'Argumentació consistiex en la construcció i posterior intercanvi (iterativament) d'arguments entre un conjunt d'agents, amb l'objectiu de raonar a favor o en contra d'una determinada proposta. Respecte a la Planificació Automàtica, donat un estat inicial del món, un objectiu a aconseguir, i un conjunt d'accions possibles, l'objectiu és construir programes capaços de calcular de forma automàtica un pla que permeta aconseguir l'estat final a partir de l'estat inicial. El principal objectiu d'aquesta tesi és proposar un model que combine i integre les tres línies anteriors. Més específicament, nosaltres considerem un SMA com un equip d'agents amb capacitats de planificació i argumentació. En aquest sentit, donat un problema de planificació amb un conjunt d'objectius, els agents (cooperatius) construeixen conjuntament un pla per a resoldre els objectius del problema i, al mateix temps, raonen sobre la viabilitat dels plans, utilitzant com a ferramenta de diàleg l'Argumentació. Per tant, l'objectiu no és només obtindre automàticament un pla solució generat de forma col·laborativa entre els agents, sinó també utilitzar les creences dels agents sobre la informació del context per a raonar sobre la viabilitat dels plans en la seua futura etapa d'execució. D'aquesta manera, es pretén que el sistema siga capaç de tornar plans col·laboratius més robustos i adaptats a les circumstàncies de l'entorn d'execució. En aquesta tesi es dissenya, construeix i avalua un model d'argumentació basat en raonament defeasible per a un sistema de planificació cooperativa multiagent. El sistema dissenyat és independent del domini, demostrant així la capacitat de resoldre problemes en diferents contextos d'aplicació. Concretament el sistema s'ha avaluat en dominis sensibles al context com és la inte·ligència Ambiental i en problemes de les competicions internacionals de planificació.Pajares Ferrando, S. (2016). Defeasible Argumentation for Cooperative Multi-Agent Planning [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/60159TESISCompendi

What place has grammar in the English curriculum? An analysis of ninety years’ policy debate: 1921 to 2011.

Since 1921 England’s governments have commissioned enquiries into English and literacy teaching, leading towards published recommendations and requirements for English grammar teaching. Governments’ officially sanctioned publications represent their policy aspirations for English and literacy. Research studies have explored the subsequent challenge for schools and teachers who must integrate grammar into a subject whose wider philosophies may conflict with an explicit grammar element. My study draws on critical theory to analyse the ideological discourses of English grammar these official policy documents reveal, and how they conflict or coincide with wider ideologies of English and literacy in schools. My study uses a two-stage analysis. First is an intertextual analysis using a corpus approach to identify the data’s grammar topics through its keywords and argumentation types. Second is a qualitative critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the documents’ main ideas and ideological discourses. The CDA analysis reveals three main ideological discourses of grammar, namely of ‘heritage and authority’, ‘standards and control’, and ‘life chances and skills’. These discourses are constructed from both prescriptive and descriptive traditions of linguistic thinking, and draw on ideological perspectives of teaching and teachers, learning and learners, and changing philosophies of English over time. The findings show no direct connection between the topic keywords policy authors use and the ideological positions they adopt. But there is a clear trend in argumentation approaches used to make hoped-for claims for grammar’s place and benefits in subject English. The discourses found question whether teachers are sufficiently prepared for grammar teaching and whether learners are sufficiently prepared for communicating in the workplace. The policy ideologies of grammar found in the qualitative analysis are finally re-mapped against wider philosophies of subject English to identify the broad policy trends

A study on digital-based argumentative writing in English of South Korean university students

In higher education in South Korea, English proficiency has been specifically emphasised by the government (Kang, 2015; Kang, 2018; Kim, 2017; Shim & Park, 2008; Williams, 2015). However, writing skills have had little attention in education settings, including higher education institutions (Kim, 2018; Shin, 2018; Park, 2020; Shin & Hyun, 2020; Yu, 2019), despite a series of educational reforms. Students in South Korean higher education are now facing practical and specific needs for argumentative writing in English (Shim, 2016; Shin, 2018). However, the overall context of English education does not fully reflect their real needs (Kim, 2018; Kwon, 2012; Kwak, 2017; Shim, 2016). South Korean universities require their students to reach a specific level at one of the English proficiency tests (Kim, 2018; Ma, 2018; Shim, 2016), most of which include at least one argumentative writing task. Additionally, the certificate of English proficiency test is widely used as the basic skills reference for their career (Kim, 2018). In the meantime, writing proficiency has increasingly gained its own weight in English language tests (Kim, 2018; Ma, 2018; Shin, 2018), adding to the burden on students to develop their writing proficiency (Kim, 2018; Ma, 2018). Despite students’ need for improvement in English writing proficiency, including English argumentative writing, writing courses given by South Korean higher education institutions are still rare (Kim, 2018; Ma, 2018; Shin, 2018; Yu, 2019) and often allow little room for reviewing tasks (Kim, 2018; Ma, 2018; Shim, 2018), even though they commonly use a process-based approach. Furthermore, in immediate response to their needs, higher education institutions in both the public and private sectors have maintained narrow academic attention, focusing on test specific writing skills (Kim, 2018; Shin, 2018). All these situations have resulted in a lack of educational opportunities for students to receive theoretically and systematically well designed instruction in developing their argumentation skills (Shin, 2018). For South Korean students learning English as a foreign language (EFL), argumentative writing in English includes acquiring an understanding of and the skills for both critical thinking and English-specific conventions for the target genre of writing (Ahn & Park, 2019; Choi, 2008; Shim, 2016). To promote a fast and concrete understanding of argumentation in English, representative organisational structures are often used in instructional practices. While many of the courses for English argumentative writing in South Korea are limited to the delivery of instructions, or creating a rough claim-evidence link in a paragraph, this simple formula-based approach may have a limited influence on the level of argumentation that university students in South Korea are able to develop (Choi, 2008). To enhance students’ in-depth knowledge of and skills for making arguments in English, a systematic and effective instructional model is necessary, targeting argumentation development and investigated by rigorous research. However, with a traditionally narrow focus on writing in English education, studies on English writing itself, including argumentative writing, have been limited, despite the importance of this area. As a way of introducing systematically presented models into instruction in English argumentative writing, the Toulmin model can be an effective option. It suggests a detailed, sequenced, intensively explained process for the logical framework for writing in English. In this sense, it is necessary to explore how to modify and apply Toulmin’s components into the courses for English argumentative writing in South Korean higher education. In addition to the practical applicability of the Toulmin model, it is necessary to consider the common context in which writing courses in South Korean higher education institutions provide some phases for drafting and revision/editing, which are broadly anchored in the process-based writing approach. Considering the practical challenge caused by a lack of time for drafting in writing courses (Kim, 2018; Ma, 2018; Shim, 2018), online based classes can be a better option, enabling more flexibility in time and space. Even before the Covid-19 outbreak, diverse synchronous and asynchronous digital writing environments have been utilised in the field of higher education in South Korea to enhance students’ writing performance and also increase the connectivity between learners and teachers. However, the digital environments for English writing in South Korea are still based on a lack of rigour in terms of research evidence, which signals the need for more research into how best to develop digital writing platforms and incorporate necessary support for users. With the two main areas of English argumentative writing and digital learning environments for writing combined, this study explores the effectiveness of a digital-based argumentative writing course in South Korea, as well as the pedagogical implications. To investigate the effects of digital course development for instruction in English argumentative writing for university students in South Korea and derive insights in digital course design for English argumentative writing for university students in South Korea, this study used a sequential mixed-methods design: quantitative phase followed by qualitative phase for collection and analysis of data sets. The English argumentative writing course in this study applies the Toulmin model (1958; 2003) as a specific teaching strategy, with a cycle of drafting and exchanging feedback using the process-based writing approach. To provide the online group with a digital-based collaborative writing1 environment for feedback exchanges, the writing platform, Scholar, was used. In this study, 43 undergraduate students in South Korea participated in a writing course for one semester, 22 participants in a control group (offline course) and 21 participants in an intervention group (online course). They participated in pre- and post-writing tests, two sessions of interviews, and narrative writing for reflection. Also, ten university teaching staff and e-developers took part in one individual interview session each, to provide professional views on the online instructional design that is implemented in the English argumentative writing of this study. In terms of the effectiveness of the online writing course for developing argumentation skills in English, the findings from the quantitative analysis show both online and offline courses had a positive impact on improvement and retention. Although the statistical results present no indication that the online class had higher learning gains than the offline group by any significant difference, this result is supported by the findings from the qualitative analysis, which indicates that the online group performed better in terms of the quality and the quantity of peer feedback. In addition, the findings from the qualitative analysis suggest that the writing course in this study helped students to develop their knowledge and sensitivity in argumentation in English, and the online course facilitated enhanced engagement in feedback tasks. Moreover, despite recognising the value of face-to-face interaction for English argumentative writing, the qualitative findings suggest that the anonymity and convenience of the online writing course in this study encouraged participation in feedback. Finally, the findings from teaching staff and e-developer interviews reveal generally positive perceptions of and evaluations of the usefulness and applicability of the Toulmin model for English argumentation development, and the collaborative writing environment of Scholar. ( 1. In this study, the term, ‘collaborative writing,’ means individual student’s essay writing supported by external feedback, including peer and teacher feedback, not co-authorship in writing one shared essay together.