Isolation is often a problem in online courses. In this qualitative study, we used care ethics perspectives to design the social organization of an online course to foster the development of robust collaborative professional relationships. Redesign focused on two areas. First, we centered all assignments on complex real-world problems. Second, we used dialogic instructor-assisted self-assessment. We found that students built professional relationships through dialogue, and simultaneously produced high-quality work. The significance of this work lies in its potential to help other instructors address the challenge of helping teachers adopt collaboration as a professional disposition.