Advances in web based learning

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.