Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to address the challenge and potential of online higher and continuing education, of fostering and promoting, in a global perspective across time and space, democratic values working for a better world. Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents a generalized dialogic learning architecture of networked collaborative learning and makes a plea for a theory-informed networked collaborative learning architecture and methodology appropriate for adult learners in higher and continuing education. Findings: Values include mutual political and intercultural understanding, collaboration, and tolerance to cultural and ethical diversity, and they are mediated through collaborative dialogue and knowledge-building processes between learners. While embedded, empirically, in a networked distance learning context, established through synchronous and asynchronous communication technologies, the paper advocates for theory informed pedagogical designs and a teaching-learning methodology, which assumes online collaborative dialogue as the centre of a genuine learning process. Originality/value: The paper complements this plea with a description and evaluation of the implementation of the pedagogical architecture into a Danish Master Programme. (Contains 1 note, 2 tables, and 1 figure.)