Advances in web based learning

With the rapid development of Web-based learning, a new set of learning - vironments including virtual classrooms, virtual laboratories and virtual u- versities are being developed. These new learning environments, however, also introduce new problems that need to be addressed. On the technical side, there is a need for the deployment of e? ective technologies on Web-based education. On the learning side, the cyber mode of learning is very di? erent from tra- tional classroom-based learning. On the management side, the establishment of a cyber university imposes very di? erent requirements for the set up. ICWL 2005, the 4th International Conference on Web-Based Learning, was held in Hong Kong, China from July 31 to August 3, 2005, as a continued - tempttoaddressmanyoftheabove-mentionedissues. Followingthegreatsuccess of ICWL 2002 (Hong Kong, China), ICWL 2003 (Australia), and ICWL 2004 (China), ICWL 2005 aimed at presenting progresson the technical, pedagogical, as well as management issues of Web-based learning. The conference featured a comprehensive program, including a number of tutorials, two keynote talks, a main track containing regular as well as short paper presentations, and an application track. We received a total of 99 submissions from all over the world. The Program Committee selected 33 papers as regular papers for presentation in the main track, an acceptance rate of about 33%. Due to the high-quality submissions, the Committee decided to further accept 9 papers as short papers for presentation.