In this paper we discuss the design process that took place while creating social software for Amsterdam University of Professional Education (AUPE) and the interactive knowledge platform, called ‘Theme-sites’. Themesites are used collaboratively by nine universities bound by a consortium, Digital University (DU). The DU is experimenting using communities of practice (CoPs) as a way to to stimulate the use of ICT in Higher Education. We describe the redesign, for which we used principles of design research (Col-lins et al., 2004). However in both described cases user experiences revealed that users have difficulties in getting actively involved in the knowledge portal. We propose how we might redesign the knowledge platform to support learning processes better, using theories like Wenger’s (1998) related to learning ar-chitectures. This paper aims at expanding design knowledge about knowledge portals and CoPs and dis-cusses the yet overseen critical design elements, like the brokering competences that facilitators need.
