In this paper, we describe the findings from a three-year multi-phased investigation into the Web practice of online mathematics communities. Our results indicate that the equivalent technologies that enable text-input or image-uploads without the need to understand programming languages have not been made available for the mathematics/ scientific communities to enable fluid communications. Given the global importance of mathematical and scientific collaborations, we argue that the mathematical and scientific communities are significant but neglected groups, and that more attention should be given to the user-interface designs to support fluid online mathematics communications.

Combining the interactive communication power of Web 2.0 and social-constructivist theory in education research, online collaborative learning (OCL) has now become an area of intensive research and has generated many favourable results. Yet, the term online collaborative learning, or any other related terms, are seldom seen in mathematics education journals. This paper will, after a brief overview of OCL theory, describe the problems associated with OCL in mathematics education and offer MathPen (an online handwriting recognition system) as a potential solution.