The background context for this paper is the EUDORA Advanced Curriculum Development project - Europäisches Doktorat Lehrerbildung/European Doctorate in Teaching and Teacher Education - funded by the European Commission under the Erasmus Action (Higher Education) of the Socrates Programme (2003-05). The long term vision for the EUDORA project is to lay the foundations for an open network of participating institutions which aims for sustained collaboration to be developed in relation to doctoral studies in the field of teaching and teacher education. This project supports a consortium of 11 universities from 9 European Union member states and Turkey at the present time. As part of a strategy of complementary actions, several Intensive Programmes (IPs) have also been supported during this period. Each IP brings together graduate students and staff from an even wider network of universities for at least 10 days to work on a specific subject. These IPs have formed a part of modules which have been developed in a number of fields. Accordingly participation in the modules is not restricted to attendance at the intensive programmes. Rather the IPs complement the community-building and learning activities which start 3-4 months in advance and continue 6 months beyond the summer school, in preparatory and follow-up activities.Our research aims are to explore student expectations and the student experience in these modules and also the conditions that support the development of communities of practice. This point of departure has given rise to several research questions including the following:1. What are the key conditions for facilitating student engagement as active participants in communities of practice across geographically distributed study centres? 2. What is the potential added value of the use of collaborative web-based technologies in supporting such engagement and community building?This development has been underpinned by a socio-constructivist approach to learning. Our particular areas of interest in the role of collaborative web-based technologies in promoting the development of collaborative knowledge building has a parallel in the self-organising virtual communities that have become a significant form of informal education. A number of these informal communities have developed complex, multi-functional Internet portals that are in some cases advanced collaboration and knowledge management tools. We have also been influenced by Lipponen and Lallimo (2004) who have depicted the underlying principles and criteria for next generation of the Internet technologies that supports the development of such advanced virtual communities, which they refer to as "educational collaborative technology". In doing so they distinguish these from traditional Internet tools (Web pages, ftp, e- mail, mailing list, newsgroup, chat, and forum). Our overall approach towards this enquiry is set within an ongoing action and design research framework. The study reported on in this paper focuses on the ELHE module and IP - E-Learning in Higher Education - and on the associated pilot project with the aim of designing and developing of a virtual collaboration environment for ELHE and in particular on the student experience of these developments in 2004. Empirical data was gathered in two ways: 1) by analysing the portal logs and submissions of learners, and2) by conducting focus group interviews with all 20 participants of the ELHE summer school.ReferenceLipponen, L., & Lallimo, J. (2004). Assessing applications for collaboration: From collaboratively usable applications to collaborative technology. British Journal of Educational Technology, 35(4), 443-461.