Changing purposes and composition of UK higher education increases the challenge of providing effective and timely academic writing development. User-group representatives identified the dissertation as a part of the student experience that is especially challenging and where students often lack appropriate support. Many technological solutions for writing development have been tried with varying degrees of success. ADE creates a step change by using social software to both develop a reflective, critical voice and to provide networked social support for UG and PG dissertation writing based on sound pedagogical models, using authentic examples, and following Web 2.0 tenets.