Within the background where education is increasingly driven by the economies of scale and research funding, we propose an alternative online open and connected framework (OOC) for building global learning communities using mobile social media. We critique a three year action research case study involving building collaborative global learning communities around a community of practice of learning researchers and practitioners. The results include the development of a framework for utilising mobile social media to support collaborative curriculum development across international boundaries. We conclude that this framework is potentially transferrable to a range of educational contexts where the focus is upon student-generated mobile social media projects. Keywords: community of practice; mlearning; global collaboration framework (Published: 6 September 2013) Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2013, 21 : 21955 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v21i0.21955