In this paper the authors explored the question of collective understanding in online mathematics education settings and presented a brief overview of traditional methods for documenting norms and collective mathematical practices. A method for documenting collective development was proposed that builds on existing methods and frameworks yet is sensitive to the particularities of interaction in an online setting. This study used data from recent projects to further describe and highlight the steps of the proposed method for analyzing collective development in an online setting and to ground discussions of research and practice.