Students are an important stakeholder group for higher education institutions due to their increasing physical and virtual mobility. This leads to competitive pressure among universities regarding the quality of their e-learning arrangements. The offering of student-centered online group work modules is a decisive quality factor. But comprehensive descriptions for the concrete implementation of such learning arrangements and their quality assurance are rare. A shift from the academic design perspective to the student’s point of view is often missing - a fact that in the digital age can lead to migration and disinterest of students concerning the specific module or even university. Therefore, this article first introduces Virtual Collaborative Learning (VCL) as an established best practice approach, with four design dimensions for quality assurance from an academic perspective. Second, these best practices are enhanced by a qualitative analysis of 100 written reflections of VCL participants to identify, systematize and prioritize essential criteria for the success of group learning from the students’ perspective and derive additional multi-perspective design recommendations.