Video-mediated communication should be considered as a genuine mode of communication characterized by technological settings, capabilities, skills and competences of participants, and the specific purposes of the communicative activities. However, with videoconferencing being so similar to face-to-face communication, users tend to consider it to be just that. These presumptions can lead to problems and misunderstandings, and point up the specific features of videomediated communication – but new insights are also gained into the nature of face-to-face communication. Actual physical presence, for example, turns out to be a major element of human interaction with telepresence being the attempt to reproduce it in a technical setting. Results from the analysis of a teleteaching seminar show the ways in which this falls short of expectations – while fulfilling other expectations at the same time.