This study evaluates the effectiveness of an educational strategy that uses critical debate assisted by collaborative software. The strategy was designed to improve the argumentative levels of university students in the field of education at the University of Salamanca. A within-subjects quasi-experimental design was used on a sample of 147 pairs of students. The educational strategy was implemented in three stages, Induction, Debate and Final Report. During the Debate stage, a digital adaptation of the Critical Debate model was used, which was developed synchronously in the university’s computer lab. To assess the argumentative level Erduran´s coding scheme was applied, which categorizes the argumentation according to the quality of the oppositions or refutations. The results indicated a positive and sustained progression in the levels of argumentation throughout the intervention, highlighting the effectiveness of the educational strategy. These findings emphasize the importance of integrating the teaching of argumentation into initial teacher training, promoting critical and collaborative argumentative dialogue as a foundation for construction of disciplinary knowledge and enhancing argumentative reasoning. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.