Abstract: Asynchronous Learning Networks are the facilities and procedures to allow members of the learning communities to be more effective and efficient in their learning. One approach is to see how the 'sharing' of knowledge can be augmented through metadata descriptions attached to portfolios and project work. Another approach is to facilitate the reflection upon individual or collaborative learning experiences (Okamoto, Cristea, Matsui, & Miwata, 2000). The position to be defended in my panel contribution is that both the metadata approach and the attempts to capture the students' meta-knowledge are rather complicated because of social and emotional reasons.