Cooperative learning and team-based learning have been widely recognized as beneficial strategies to improve all levels of education, including higher education. Just forming groups, however, does not automatically lead to better learning and motivation; cooperation flourishes only under appropriate conditions (Fink; Gillies; Parmelee et al.).…

In this article the authors focus on how features of a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment can elicit and support domain-specific reasoning and more specifically historical reasoning. The CSCL environment enables students to collaborate on a historical inquiry task and in writing an argumentative essay. In order to support…