International collaborative learning is becoming more viable through a variety of Internet enabled software products. Group Support Systems appear to offer promise. But how to facilitate the teaching and learning process in electronic environments is not well understood. If education is to involve an interactive process of collaborative inquiry and dialogue between remote groups of learners, then how to design meaningful learning experiences presents challenges in logistics, technology support, software design, and pedagogy.

To better model the facilitation process in such environments, a theoretical framework based upon an extension of Adaptive Structuration Theory is suggested. This framework is then related to experiences with custom application software development using Lotus Notes Domino™, internal trials and a limited scale collaborative learning exercise between students at Auckland Institute of Technology and Uppsala University.