THE E-LEARNING AS A COMPLEMENT TO CLASSROOM WORK

ABSTRACT

The interactive communication systems are used more and more in various and diversified areas of our society. And Education is not an exception: schools are being given more equipment, database communications’ and broad band internet. Education is evolving towards a new paradigm; pupils are expected to have new skills and therefore new methods are used in classrooms. Simultaneously, the teacher’s roll evolves, the old way of teaching is left behind and the teacher becomes more of a knowledge provider, in the sense that the teacher now shows the way pupils can acquire skills to build their own knowledge. In this context, the goals of this project investigation were to verify if e-Learning could have an added-value to pupils, and if its usage, as a complement to classroom education, could be beneficial.

This project investigation also intended to verify if the usage of e-Learning and of a CMS platform could have an important roll play in motivating pupils, raising up their way of thinking and their capability of self-learning. The field investigation took place by using two groups of pupils of Públia Hortênsia de Castro Secondary School in Vila Viçosa, one of an Education and Formation Course regarding Networks of Computer Science Management and another one of the 9th grade of the so-called “regular education”. In this sense, classroom methodologies were applied aiming a constructive and constructional theory. Pupils were asked to answer a survey in order to acquire some conclusions. In a general way, the results tell us that pupils like to learn using ICTs, that they like to learn through multimedia contents and to interact online.

Regarding the CMS platform, one can verify that it brings some advantages for the pupils’ learning process and that they find that its usage is positive and valuable. The given answers, as well as the methodology that was applied, indicate that the use of e-Learning as a complement to the work done in the classroom, functioned as an additional factor of motivation, changing work habits, which allowed pupils to increase their critical spirit and become more autonomous, thus benefiting their learning process. In general, pupils were pleased with the methodology utilised and they reached good results in their final marks in the courses where the search was made.

KEYWORDS: e-Learning, Internet, learning.