Abstract
Nowadays education takes advantage of technology development. Mobility, increased access to education, shared resources, online communication and collaboration, interactive course content, permanent and immediate feedback, all are possible with the help of technology. In the knowledge based society, the importance of human capital is recognized as the engine of development. Taking into account the fact that the ageing becomes a challenge factor, the lifelong learning is a requirement for all. But the age and social obligations are factors which restrict the participation to learning.
Distance learning (DL) as an alternative to traditional learning offers good opportunities to education accessibility and increases the participation of students in educational programs. The characteristics of DL programs involve in a large measure the use of technology.
The main instrument used in distance learning is virtual learning environment, which offers services for communication, teaching, learning, evaluation, enhancing learning experience. The offer of educational platforms is increased year by year. All universities having distance learning programs, part time learning programs or even full time learning programs are using e-learning platforms to communicate with students, to exchange information, give access to different educational resources.
The structure of an e-learning platform is following a common pattern delivering services for communication, learning, evaluation and administration, services which are developed more or less according with users' profile. Usually, the decision of using a specific platform is related to the costs (human and infrastructure) and less on the students' needs. Based on current experience on using different platforms and on the research conducted during the PhD program a questionnaire for identifying and evaluating the online platforms' characteristics was designed.
The aim of this paper is to present the results of the questionnaire as a tool to collect feedback from the platforms' users. |