This article approaches the interaction among users of educational portals from a socio-psychological perspective. Over the past decades the integration of application systems in the Romanian educational process has increased to such an extent that practically any university provides access to data bases and has its own site and/ or domain. In the present paper we shall mainly focus on the teaching and research activity within academic field laying stress on digital competence. Therefore, we shall analyse the most important aspects involved in teacher-student virtual interaction as far as the learning process and information exchange are concerned. We have chosen this perspective primarily because it offers an insight into communication between older generations (or digital immigrants) and younger generations (or digital natives) who respond in a different manner to the advent of educational platforms. Despite the fact that both teachers and students are interested in the high quality of the educational process, their approaches are often dissimilar. Thus, not many teachers have the necessary computer skills to operate sophisticated programmes or applications; however, most of the teaching staff have integrated virtual components in their current professional life. Still, there remain some sensitive issues which call for our attention: one of them would be the neglect of the aesthetic side in designing on-line courses and activities. Concomitantly, the majority of young students nowadays are highly computer-skilled and quite critical with regard to on-line educational offers and services. Consequently, this article discusses the challenges digital immigrants have to face and the possible solutions to the difficulties they have to overcome on the competitive market of educational software.

digital emigrants, elearning