DIALECTICA
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For lower and upper secondary schools

Your class debates an AI. You give the grade.

Secondary-school students debate an AI, phase by phase. The system proposes a rubric score and a report. The teacher decides.

The student's arenasample data
  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
04:12
Motion

Smartphones should be banned for the entire school day.

You defendAGAINST · assigned by your teacher

Round 1
Your argument

A whole-day ban treats the tool as the cause. In the two schools that published figures, absences did not move after the ban. What moved was where the boredom went.

  • ✓ Anticipates the objection
  • ✓ Cites evidence
  • ✗ Hasty generalisation
Opponent's response
Concession

I grant you boredom as part of the mechanism.

Rebuttal

It still leaves the filming in the corridors unexplained, and that is the part a whole-day ban does stop.

Evidence demand

Name the two schools and the year, or drop the number and keep the mechanism.

The score comes only once the debate is over, and it is a proposal for the teacher.

The debate screen as it appears in the app. Labels and fallacy catalogue are the real ones; the debate text is sample data.

How it works

Assign it. They debate. You assess.

You assign

Pick a motion, a protocol and a deadline. Students join with a six-character code: no email, nothing to install.

  • Short
    1. 1Exposition
    2. 2Rebuttal
    3. 3Closing
  • World Schools
    1. 1Exposition
    2. 2Rebuttal
    3. 3Defence
    4. 4Closing
  • Karl Popper
    1. 1Exposition
    2. 2Cross-examination
    3. 3Answering
    4. 4Rebuttal
    5. 5Closing

They debate

Phase by phase, on the side they were given, against an opponent that argues back and names the fallacies it finds.

Dialectica
class 9B · Ada Byron State School

Hi, Giulia.

You have 1 assignment to do. Due Friday 20 March.

Your assignments
TO DOdue 20 March

Smartphones should be banned for the entire school day.

You defendAGAINST · assigned by your teacher
Start →
DONE8,0/10

Cities should close their historic centres to private traffic.

See reportSee debate
The student's screen. They join with a class code.

You assess

A score per rubric dimension and a draft report, with the reasoning behind both. Change anything, then export one PDF per student.

Ada Byron State School · class 9BStudent: Giulia Ferraro · 12/03/2026
Dialectica
Motion

«Smartphones should be banned for the entire school day.» Role: against, World Schools, 4 phases

Content30/40Style29/40Strategy13/20Total72/100
Grade7.0Level: Intermediate
Strongest point

«If the ban only applied during lessons, phones would go straight back into students' hands at break, and break is when the videos filmed on the sly get made.»

You took the opposing proposal and showed its concrete consequence, instead of repeating your own claim.

To improve

«Banning things has never worked, everybody knows that, and any teacher will tell you the same.»

«Everybody knows» is not evidence: the listener can deny it at no cost, and you are left with nothing to stand on.

Rhetorical profile

From the debate analysis, not a grade.

Reasoning78Rebuttal62Credibility71Engagement69Clarity84Timing66
Teacher's signature:

World Schools-style score (training) · Final assessment set by the teacher.

The exported report: a black-and-white A4.

Assessment

The AI proposes. You decide.

The AI's figure stays in a read-only column, every edit you make is recorded, and when the model is unsure it offers a range, not a number.

Report for the studentReport preview

The student reads this text only after you confirm it. You can rewrite any part, or drop it from the report. If you leave it untouched, they get the proposal as it stands.

1AssessmentTwo paragraphs, addressed to the studentRestore AI proposalDon't include in report
You held your position through all four phases, and in the Defence you answered your opponent's point instead of repeating your own. That's the hardest part of the format, and you pulled it off.

Where you lose ground is on evidence: two arguments out of five rest on an “everybody knows” that the listener can reject at no cost.
2Strongest pointQuote and why it worked
Quote
If the ban only applied during lessons, phones would go straight back into students' hands at break, and break is when the videos filmed on the sly get made.
Why it worked
You took the opposing proposal and showed its concrete consequence, instead of repeating your own claim.
6Rhetorical profileNumbers from the analysis, not editable
Rebuttal62
Credibility71
Engagement69
Clarity84
Timing66
Include the profile in the student's reportDebate analysis, not a grade. The student will see it labelled as such.
The grading screen: the AI's proposal next to the teacher's grade.
  • Review thirty debates already analysed, instead of marking thirty from scratch.
  • A black-and-white A4 report that stays readable when photocopied.
  • Accessibility settings per student: extra time, and dictation kept out of the score.

Objections

The strongest objections, answered.

The best arguments against this product, with our replies.

An automatic score anchors the teacher.

It does, and it can be measured. So the AI's figure sits apart from the grade and, when the model is unsure, becomes a range.

Frontiers in Psychology, 2026 · n = 214
Show me your agreement figure against real teachers.

We don't have one yet. The measurement is built and collection with schools is starting. Even expert annotators agree only weakly on argument quality.

Wachsmuth et al., EACL 2017
You sell in five languages a system tuned in one.

That's right. So every result we publish states the language and rubric it was measured in, and holds only there.

Fu & Liu, EMNLP 2025
All the literature, including what it does not support

Questions

Questions teachers ask first

No. It proposes a score per dimension and drafts the report. A person types the grade, and every edit is recorded.

Pilot

Want to see it with one of your classes?

An annual licence per school, with the price list sent on request.