Jianmin Zhao – författare

This year, we received about 170 submissions to ICWL 2008. There were a total of 52 full papers, representing an acceptance rate of about 30%, plus one invited paper accepted for inclusion in this LNCS proceedings. The authors of these accepted papers came from many different countries. We would like to thank all the reviewers for spending their precious time reviewing the papers and for providing valuable c- ments that aided significantly in the paper selection process. Authors of the best papers presented in this conference will be invited to submit extended versions of their papers for possible publication in a special issue of IEEE Internet Computing. This was the second time that the ICWL conference was organized in China. It was particularly special this year to hold ICWL 2008 in China, as the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games were co-located in the same country during the conference period. We would like to especially thank our Organization Co-chair, Lanfang Miao, for spending an enormous amount of effort in coordinating the local arrangements. In fact, we would like to thank the entire conference Organizing Committee for their hard work in putting together the conference. In particular, we would like to express our appreciation to our Registration Chairs, Jiying (Jean) Wang and Lanfang Miao, and Treasurer Howard Leung for their tremendous efforts in communicating with the authors regarding registration matters and maintaining the registration lists up-to-date.

This year, we received about 170 submissions to ICWL 2008. There were a total of 52 full papers, representing an acceptance rate of about 30%, plus one invited paper accepted for inclusion in this LNCS proceedings. The authors of these accepted papers came from many different countries. We would like to thank all the reviewers for spending their precious time reviewing the papers and for providing valuable c- ments that aided significantly in the paper selection process. Authors of the best papers presented in this conference will be invited to submit extended versions of their papers for possible publication in a special issue of IEEE Internet Computing. This was the second time that the ICWL conference was organized in China. It was particularly special this year to hold ICWL 2008 in China, as the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games were co-located in the same country during the conference period. We would like to especially thank our Organization Co-chair, Lanfang Miao, for spending an enormous amount of effort in coordinating the local arrangements. In fact, we would like to thank the entire conference Organizing Committee for their hard work in putting together the conference. In particular, we would like to express our appreciation to our Registration Chairs, Jiying (Jean) Wang and Lanfang Miao, and Treasurer Howard Leung for their tremendous efforts in communicating with the authors regarding registration matters and maintaining the registration lists up-to-date.

The Second Workshop of Blended Learning (WBL 2008), as part of the 7th Inter- tional Conference on Web-Based Learning (ICWL 2008), was held in Zhejiang N- mal University, Jinhua, Zhejiang, China during August 20–22, 2008. WBL 2008 provided an international forum for the dissemination of original results in the design, implementation, and evaluation of blended learning systems and related areas. In particular, the aim of WBL 2008 was to bring together researchers from academia as well as commercial developers from industry to explore ideas, exchange and share experiences, and further build the blended learning research network. The inspirations and new ideas were expected to emerge from intensive discussions during formal sessions and social activities. The main focus of WBL 2008 was on the most critical areas of blended learning, namely, ‘e-Learning Platforms and Tools,’ ‘Design, Model and Framework of e- Learning Systems,’ ‘Practice and Experience Sharing,’ and ‘Pedagogical Issues.’ In total, the workshop selected 17 papers from authors of different countries for presen- tion and publication, a task which was not easy due to the high quality of the subm- ted papers. Using stringent selection criteria, submissions were rigorously reviewed based on their originality, significance, relevance, and clarity of presentation by an international Program Committee from Germany, Spain, UK, Italy, Ireland, Romania, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, and Macao.