Virtual conversations and academic performance's students

The formation of engineers involve enabling students in their own specialty knowledge, and, in skills related with critical thinking, reflection, argument development with verifiable and sustainable evidence, discussion management, negotiation and consensus solutions, and convincing, allowing them to improve the decision-making. This research contributes to the study of argumentative discourse, introducing a pilot scheme which is to characterize how students gathered in groups to argue their positions during a speech to their peers, via the Internet, to solve a mathematical problem. A Virtual Classroom was built under Moodle platform. Among the results obtained is a large proportion of interactions that reflects a correct handling of the relationship between the given problem and the theoretical foundations to applications in specific situations, showing a good level of knowledge construction. There was not a enough evidence to ensure that the academic performance of the students make be better using these strategies. Finally, to optimize the successful implementation of this type of methodological strategies, the presence of the teacher in the discussion forums should be considered so that he performs the necessary interventions to guide students towards constructing knowledge.