E-LEARNING IN ROMANIAN HIGHER EDUCATION: A study case

The accelerated development of the information and communication technologies determined universities, companies and educational institutions to implement alternatives to the traditional teaching methods, thereby leading to the development of e-courses. New Information and Communication Technologies mediating learning represent an important component of education and training systems. In Romania, issues connected to eLearning are comparatively little known, as there are no relevant studies regarding the present situation of eLearning use or of the ways of increasing the level of use of Information and Communication Technologies along with an increase in the efficiency of higher education. The purpose of the study is to explore the level of dissemination of eLearning in the Romanian higher education, regarding both awareness about eLearning as a model and actual participation in such courses, to assess the respondents’ opinion on eLearning, to analyze the perspectives of using elearning, and the students’ opinions concerning e-learning in comparison with traditional educational model. The paper reports the results of a research that was conducted in Iasi, at the "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University. Through the application of appropriate statistical methods, the research’ aim was to describe and assess to what extent computers are used for learning of the students in order to highlight any important differences in terms of gender, specialty, and the preferred form of learning for postgraduate courses.