Electronic group support systems (GSS) are distributed computer technologies, developed to supportcooperative work in organisations, predominantly in a business environment. Electronic meetingsystems (EMS), for example, are GSS specifically developed to support meetings. The considerableexperience gathered from the use of GSS in business is briefly summarised and discussed, with theaim of determining the potential use of this technology in university education. The current transfer ofthe GSS technology into universities is critically examined, in particular in the perspective of therapidly emerging global platform of distributed multimedia technology. The discussion isexemplified with the GroupSystems EMS developed at the University of Arizona, USA.