<p>Research in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) has identified a gap - the, so called, social-technical gap - between the wide range of human social interactions that CSCW ideally should support and what current technology actually does support. At the same time recent work in cognitive science and CSCW has begun to elucidate the multifarious roles that the body plays in cognitive processes as well as many forms of social interaction, e.g. gestures, pointing, eye-contact and bodily mimicry. The aim of this dissertation has been to analyse to what degree different aspects of embodied social interaction are supported by different types of synchronous, remote location CSCW technology, and to develop recommendations for future development concerning aspects of embodiment. For this purpose, a number of crucial aspects of embodied social interaction have been identified and about twenty CSCW systems - both research prototypes and commercial systems - have been analysed with respects to how well they support these different aspects. The analysis shows that most CSCW systems only support a very limited range of aspects of embodied social interaction.</p>

Research in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) has identified a gap - the, so called, social-technical gap - between the wide range of human social interactions that CSCW ideally should support and what current technology actually does support. At the same time recent work in cognitive science and CSCW has begun to elucidate the multifarious roles that the body plays in cognitive processes as well as many forms of social interaction, e.g. gestures, pointing, eye-contact and bodily mimicry. The aim of this dissertation has been to analyse to what degree different aspects of embodied social interaction are supported by different types of synchronous, remote location CSCW technology, and to develop recommendations for future development concerning aspects of embodiment. For this purpose, a number of crucial aspects of embodied social interaction have been identified and about twenty CSCW systems - both research prototypes and commercial systems - have been analysed with respects to how well they support these different aspects. The analysis shows that most CSCW systems only support a very limited range of aspects of embodied social interaction.

In this paper we analyze development problems and tendencies of virtual education. Separately it’s emphasized the situation with distance education (DE) in Lithuania. The structure, principles and facilities of LieDM network are briefly described. In the first part of the paper main attention is paid to the technological aspect. Examples of different methodologies are overviewed as well as existing norms and standards. In detail we overview the requirements of recorded video presentations and solutions using different media formats and software products. In the second part the specific situation of DE application in Klaipeda University is analyzed. We make the requirement specification and the description of application area. Finally we make a design of the virtual learning management system using procedures of system engineering.