Synchronous discussions in distributed computer-supported learning environments are usually conducted employing chat tools. Lack of coordination and coherence among the contributions is a typical problem with chat. In this paper, we propose to apply learning protocols to increase coordination, coherence, and as a consequence the efficiency of learning. Learning protocols are system controlled cooperation scripts, which impose constraints on the learning discourse: Participants explicitely identify the reference of their contributions as well as the type of contribution; furthermore, the order of contributions is predetermined ...