E-learning - THE WAY OF THE FUTURE

“We are evolving more and more towards a universe where the television describesprescribes the social world while the cultural world is ruled by information and communication technologies. The internet is turning into the referee of the access to existence for culture. These complex systems of communication set in motion enormous sums, sophisticated technical equipment, tremendous human resources and benefits billions of people offering them a vital position in the political, economic and social realms of any society.”[1] The socio-economic development has undergone a series of stages representing as many technological revolutions, culminating at the threshold of the third millennium with the informational society, based on knowledge, whose physiognomy tends to become mainly digital. The evolution of the economy is driven by education. One argument is the paradigm according to which the increase in the individual knowledge leads to the development and the coming of age of his/her complementary systems: family, community, region, society. All these are possible in the informational era by means of continuous education, distance learning, on-line learning or e-learning. The concern for education is the greatest challenge for most governments in their effort to promote democratic ideals of freedom, peace, responsibility and social justice, in their attempt to generate greater prosperity and competition on a free global market. It is clear that the education system has experienced numerous and profound transformations governed by the idea of renewal, successive rapid changes which have affected all the structural, functional and contextual components defining modern education. The limited room available in institutions and the various drawbacks encountered by some students, corroborated with the necessity of learning throughout one’s entire life, lead to considering open learning and distance learning as a viable alternative. This falls into the newly defined paradigm of role fluidity, centred on the student, distributed resources, virtual facilities and asynchronous lessons. The traditional axioms of school functioning is thus ground shaken and the metaphor of the all-knowing teacher and the spoon-fed student remains just a memory. Therefore, updating the teaching/learning procedures ahs become of the major objectives of the educational reform everywhere. Consequently, it is justifiable this growing demand for acquiring better more efficient working tools meant to substantially contributing to a better quality in the teaching and learning efforts. The new communication formats modify the traditional pattern of the didactic communication (teacher-student) and computer-based learning is a work method integrated in the above mentioned system teacher-student. E-learning is a new concept which can be understood as an innovative, interactive approach centred on the learner and turns the informational realm into an excellent ally. The new informational and communicational technologies change the outlook on the educational practice, and implementing is considered one of the most important issues at the beginning of this century, raised to the level of national policy.