INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT IN A HIGHER EDUCATION ESTABLISHMENT AS A MEANS OF IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF EDUCATION

In the context of external and internal requirements for accountability and improved higher education, coupled with high quality education requirements, institutions of higher learning and systems at all levels seek to understand how they can more effectively collect, disseminate and share information and seek more effective ways of making decisions and actions.

The aim of the study: to assess the existing opportunities and outline the prospects for further development of the information environment of Daugavpils University as means of improving the education quality.

The research questions were:
• How does the information environment provide the possibility for the communication of academic staff, administration and students of Daugavpils University?
• What were the pedagogical impacts of DUIS and Moodle platform on the educational process, and how did the academic staff and students reflect upon and describe information environment at Daugavpils University for achieving the main goal - training highly qualified and competitive specialists?

An open questionnaire survey was conducted, which consisted of 19 open and closed questions and was divided into two parts. The first part (1-9) contained questions which were to characterize information environment of Daugavpils University, and the second part (10-19) concerned the demographic data of respondents, in which 125 members of the academic staff from five faculties and 330 students participated. Advantages of using DUIS and Moodle platform, as well as barriers that interfere with using and sharing data and information effectively were identified.