Abstract: The article argues that the challenge for e-learning in higher education is to support competence development rather than knowledge transfer. This is often difficult for e-learning in higher education scenarios because so far the way it is used in many cases is not designed to support competence development but rather to distribute learning materials. Two different modes of e-learning organisation are established and described: a distributive and the collaborative e-learning mode. It is argued that a collaborative mode stimulates more potentials for competence development than the distributive mode.