Abstract:

Technology has become a significant part of every school system, as much as it is at University Politehnica Timisoara, Romania (UPT). Now, it is a Sine qua non condition for both students and teachers in preparing resources. In the last three years, we have conducted a study aimed to consult the students` opinion on the desired course frame.

It was debated whether incorporating technology into the curricula is appropriate or not, if so – what type of technology would be the most suitable, and how will a teacher be able to predict if a technology based learning will enhance instruction rather than distracting from it?.

Every proposal of strategy is rooted in providing relevant, real-life lesson plans, engaging and inspiring the learners. To make lessons fun, creative, challenging, effective, tutors should use: online resources, data collection tools, word processing applications, educational games, spreadsheet generators. They have the responsibility to assist students in understanding the basic concepts and when it is necessary to detail upon a subject. Offering the information in channels and manners easier to understand is the main goal of education. This perspective binds educators to step up and fundamentally change their own practice.

UPT adopted solutions that meets the needs of modern learning management systems (LMS). It is not one of the first initiatives of this kind in the university environment across the world, Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) was an approach addressed since the `50s.
Such an approach was run at UPT. The study was extended on a period of three years. The target group consisted in 283 students (all of them being enrolled in the CAI course) that were involved in developing individual courses. They were asked to plan and develop open courses using LMS.

The aim of this article is to present an analysis of the student technologies proposals to be used in the development of open courses. The objective was to create a course including a list of desired technologies that would increase their interest. This analysis provides report statistics about the type of courses developed, the number of activities on LMS for each 3 hours classical teaching, the number of activities on LMS for one course, the type of resources and activities to be exploited by tutors. An increased interest about the students` attention was upon the possibility of including many external media resources. The most important aspect observed by analyzing the courses was the fact that at least three external open educational resources were desired to be included in a three hours classical teaching class to complement the traditional printed material. All the materials produced and selected by the students had a high qualitative standard. A close attention was paid to the interactive potential of a resource.

Taking into account the findings of this study, further actions can be taken, such as: centralizing the outcomes, presenting it to the decision factors from the University management board, proposing a strategy/ a general guideline for all the tutors of the University.

UPT is opening towards digitalization, towards integrating information and communication technologies into practice. The biggest effort in delivering modern education, technology based, consists in preparing and developing creative, interactive, engaging classes.

Keywords:

LMS, technologies, students` feedback, e-learning, CAI.