The interdisciplinary field of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) explores ways of making learning more engaging, stimulating, and effective by promoting collaboration among learners through the use of computer networking, simulations, and computational support. This volume reproduces the editorial introductions to the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL) since its beginning in 2006. The introductions situate the articles in each quarterly issue within current CSCL research activity and highlight the unique perspectives and important contributions of the included papers. The introductions also present reflections on topics of CSCL theory and methodology, providing concise contributions of their own. Written in different styles, the introductions as an ensemble provide a lively, stimulating introduction to the CSCL research field as it has grown over the years.

The current volume is intended to provide an overview of the eLibrary and some documentation of my life as the author of these texts.

This introduction to CSCL by Gerry Stahl, Tim Koschmann and Dan Suthers is perhaps the most quoted paper in the CSCL field. Here are both the 2020 third version and the original version from the Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (first edition). Accompanying it are translations into Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese (traditional and simplified), Romanian and German.

These are case studies of student teams using VMT to work on problems in the mathematical domain of combinatorics. The version of VMT used here included a generic whiteboard for sketching graphical representations. Data from these sessions was analyzed by a number of researchers in addition to the VMT project members.The essays in this volume were co-authored with close colleagues.

The idea of personalizable software is fashionable today. I explored it in a number of software prototypes a decade or two earlier. The perspectives mechanism in Hermes, my dissertation software system, was an initial major initiative in this direction. WebNet was a follow-up system to integrate the perspective mechanism into discussion-forum collaboration software. Subsequent systems explored personalization mechanisms in systems for work and for learning, including TCA for teachers developing and sharing curriculum and systems for automated critics in design systems or reviewers of journal articles. In each case, the mechanisms were intended to support users to view and discuss materials from their personal perspectives and to share those views with others to encourage building group perspectives. The volume is organized in terms of essays on (a) structured hypermedia, (b) personalizable software, (c) software perspectives and (d) applications to health care, education and publishing.

The volume includes essays that address the philosophical issues raised in computer support of collaborative learning and by the concept of group cognition. In particular, philosophy of group cognition should tackle the following questions: * What is the nature of group cognition? * What are the conditions of possibility for the existence of group cognition? The essays explore intersubjectivity, joint attention, common ground, collaborative learning and related concepts through analysis of empirical examples and review of the most important philosophic sources.

These essays are some of the most important papers co-written with my colleagues that supplement the discussion of CSCL research in the published books. These chapters take the discussion in specific directions. They begin with my general reflections on the importance of CSCL as a research field, situating my work on the VMT Project and my theory of group cognition within the field of CSCL. They describe the VMT research project, including its research approach, technology, pedagogy and analysis methods. Mostly, they discuss in some detail the findings that have emerged from the VMT Project about the nature of online interaction in that type of CSCL setting. The volume concludes with reports of work in the project and future directions that were underway.