Several CSCW topics are currently being researched within the Internet/WWW topic, amongst them are : annotation, collaborative annotation; organisational/structural issues, how to put order into CHAOS; use of the Web as CSCL tool/medium.
Long before WWW had reached wide acceptance, the Internet was being used for educational purposes, mostly via mailing lists and bulletin boards. In spite of tremendous growth, WWW is still only marginally used for teaching and learning activities, probably even more so in Europe, where very few primary or secondary schools have access to the Internet [].
Distance Learning is not a new concept, it has existed for a long time, the issue here is the introduction of a new technology into it, a computer-multimedia-mediated approach. Asynchronous approach has been applied to distance education, but synchronous interactive approach is relatively new.