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 effective technologies on Web-based education. On the learning side, the cyber mode of learning is very different from tra- tional classroom-based learning. On the management side, the establishment of a cyber university imposes very different 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 - tempt to address many of the above-mentioned issues. Following the great success 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.