Aims:

Due to the popularity of the Internet, we are seeing more and more sophisticated techniques being developed to support distance education. The rapid development of Web-based learning and new concepts like virtual classrooms, virtual laboratories and virtual universities introduces many new issues to be addressed. On the technical side, we need to develop effective technology for supporting distance education. On the learning and management side, we need to consider issues such as new style of learning and different system set-up requirements. Finally, the issue of standardization of e-learning systems should also be considered. In this special issue, we focus on the technical side, although we are also interested in social and educational aspects, of distance education. We call for papers that present recent development on Internet technologies for supporting distance education.

Topics:

In this special issue, we call for original papers that describe novel internet technologies that support distance education. Areas of interests include, but not limited to: Distributed course-material databases, multi-modal query and Web document processing Media server architectures, including peer-to-peer, multi-server and grid-based architectures Techniques to support synchronous and asynchronous tutoring Techniques to support collaborative and personalized learning Integration of multimedia information, including images / audios / videos / graphics Survey/overview that describes social and educational aspects of the technologies

Submission:

Each paper for submission should be formatted in double spacing, single column of no more than 30 pages in length. The review process will be double-blind -- the paper itself should not include the authors' identity. Instead, a separate cover letter should be submitted that includes the paper title, the list of authors and their affiliations, and information of the contact author. Prospective authors are invited to submit papers in PDF format via email to Qing Li at Qing.Li@cityu.edu.hk. Updated information of this call can be found in www.cs.cityu.edu.hk/~rynson/toit/toit-cfp.html.

Revised Schedule:

Deadline for paper submission: June 1, 2006 Completion of first review: October 13, 2006 Deadline for paper revision: November 10, 2006 Completion of second review: December 4, 2006 Final Acceptance Approval by EiC: January 5, 2007 Final Accepted papers due: February 16, 2007 Publication Date: 2007/2008

Guest Editors: