bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
DL BEST PRACTICES WITHIN UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST, DEPARTMENT FOR ODL
Authors: Logofatu Michaela
Published: February 2023

University of Bucharest, together other public and private Romanian universities, have implemented ID/IFR study programs starting with year 1999. We will use the acronymes: ID for Distance Learning and IFR for part-time on-campus study programs. The starting point was the project "Phare Multi-country Programme for Distance Education", 1994 - 1999, aimed at creating a network of 40 study centers IDD(CSIDD) in 11 countries of Central and Eastern Europe. University of Bucharest run one of seven CSIDD centres in Romania. Based on the Order no. 3289/02.19.1998, the Ministry of National Education CSIDD officially recognized the CSIDD centers, their managers. These CSIDD centres were afiliated with the European Training Foundation (ETF) in Turin.
By decision of the Bucharest University Senate in May 1999, the CSIDD center was defined as the Department for Distance Learning, Lifelong Learning and Professional Conversion.
During the last 14 years, this department has designed and implemented new ID/IFR study programs. These programs were authorized and acreditated by CNEAA and ARACIS, the national authorities in charge with authorization and accreditation of the study programs in higher education institutions, in Romania.
At the same time, Lifelong learning and Professional conversion were also succesfully implemented: CISCO Networking Acdemy, Microsoft IT Academy, ECDL. All these initiatives are examples of good pratices for the public-private partnership. To illustrate this, we can refer to the learning resources provided to the University of Bucharest students that were produced in eLearning technology, early in 2003 (http://ecdl.credis.ro/cursuri-ecdl.html). As far as we know there is no other university that has similar learning resources.
The paper will present in details the best ID/IFR practices implemented during the last 14 years within the Department for ID/IFR of the University of Bucharest.
FROM WEBX.0 TO UNIVERSITYX.0: RE-IMAGINING EDUCATION
Authors: Logofatu Mihai , Logofatu Cristian
Published: February 2023

Thirty years ago: (a) John Naisbitt has anticipated that we will be living, working and learning surrounded in the information society; (b) Steven Jobs has anticipated how computers and networking will be the most important technologies used by people and organizations in the next future. Additional details from these fantastic predictions will be presented later, in the paper.
Recent communication (Strasbourg, 20.11.2012, COM(2012) 669 final) to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, "Rethinking Education: Investing in skills for better socio-economic outcomes" underlines that "European education and training systems continue to fall short in providing the right skills for employability, and are not working adequately with business or employers to bring the learning experience closer to the reality of the working environment. These skills mismatches are a growing concern for European industry's competitiveness". There is a special statement on the potential of ICT and Open Educational Resources for education.
Just in this context we will ask ourselves how modern technologies as WEB1.0, WEB2.0, WEB3.0 have influenced the universities until now and how they will influence the universities in the next future.
In this paper we will summarize some correlations between WEB X.0 and University X.0. State of art WEB technologies, particularly suitable for education, will be presented; some of them are already in use within the Department for DL of the University of Bucharest.
Finally, the authors will try to figure some WEB 2.0 technologies that could be used for the University 2.0 platform.
BLENDED LEARNING TEXTILE CHEMISTRY USING MOODLE VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
Authors: Paula Dughila , Adascalitei Adrian , Grigoriu Aurelia
Published: February 2023

Blended Learning courses combine face-to-face (traditional) and online learning. This method of learning is for students who do not want to miss out on the traditional classroom experience, but want the flexibility essential with online learning. All blended courses will meet the first day of class and at least three other face-to-face meetings. Textile chemistry can generally be divided into three major areas: dyeing and finishing chemistry, fiber and polymer chemistry, and a newer area that intersects with materials science and involves the blending of textile materials. Online e-learning has also undergone a revolution wherein virtually all universities have provided courses that can be taken asynchronously, anywhere and at anytime. Tools and technologies have rapidly evolved to transform the conventional sequential unidirectional methods into collaborative omni directional learning environments. Piaget's theory of cognitive development stated that "the learner must be active; he is not a vessel to be filled with facts. Learning involves the participation of the learner". eBooks and new collaborative learning software allows us to create materials and an environment that allow students to explore and independently navigate tendrils of interconnecting concepts that will empower and enhance their construction of a more cohesive understanding of interconnected facets of a discipline. Students are rarely prompted to construct explanations of scientific phenomena for themselves. In many undergraduate courses, students spend a great deal of time either passively listening to lecturers' explanations or reading explanations from textbooks. Moreover, textbook explanations are often presented succinctly and in rapid succession, as if the material is straightforward and requires nothing more than memorization. Classroom activities that facilitate students generating their own explanations (i.e., developing and deploying explanatory knowledge) can therefore be powerful conceptual teaching and learning tools. Active learning strategies such as cooperative learning groups, guided inquiry, and peer-led team learning demonstrate progress toward student production of explanations in the undergraduate chemistry classroom. This paper presents the design principles and implementation of interactive training modules from chemical textile engineering curricula performed on " http://www.moodle.tex.tuiasi.ro/" elearning platform. Modules can be used also in traditional didactic activity: course lectures, laboratory, seminar and / or design classes. Interactive simulations allow learning of: knowledge, skills and abilities, necessary to engineering students in their future professional activity. Elearning modules aimed mainly effective interaction between student and content. Interactive graphical interface helps the student to understand quickly and accurately the issues of the course content and enables simulation of real industrial processes.
BRANCH-RELATED TERMS FOR TEXTILE PROFESSIONALS IN BUSINESS AND TRADE
Authors: Radulescu Ionrazvan , Ghituleasa Carmen , Visileanu Emilia , Popescu Radu , Iordanescu Marius , Zaklova Ladislava
Published: February 2023

Proper adaptation to industry trends represents nowadays one of the key success factors. The textile industry is one of the most dynamic industries, with strong market requirements and links to tradition in Europe. Due to the harsh international competition a shift in the textile industry in Europe has been produced from clothing-apparel sector to technical textiles sector. The technical textiles are meant for various applications (like agriculture, personal protection, medicine, environment etc.) and involve a high level of knowledge in textile machinery and high added value for the finished products. One of the main issues stated in the Strategic Research Agenda of the European Technology Platform for Textiles and Clothing (EURATEX*, 2006) is the move from commodities to specialty products with flexible high-tech processes, which is a development direction for the future of the European textile industry.
The strong developments of textile international business bring new demand ? to have a Multilanguage flexible tool for branch-related terms. Businessman are often good in trade but without professional knowledge. They have to describe technical aspects, but do not know the proper expression. In order to help them were accomplished the Leonardo da Vinci-TOI projects Fashion School I and II and a new proposal is in preparation for the 2013 Call ? GUIDETEX.
Within the Fashion School projects I and II an on-line explanatory dictionary in 16 European language versions was accomplished (www.texsite.info). This dictionary includes 2000 branch expressions with definitions in the textile-clothing field. A brief summary of the projects results show that after 3 years form the project end, the average visitation of the portal is of 49109 visits each month. As target group of the project were firstly businessman who deal with textiles and clothes, students of vocational education and professionals who export their products.
The 2013 GUIDETEX proposal envisages the enlargement of the portal with branch-related terms in technical textiles. Several professionals in the textile industry do need a re-orientation of their business towards high-added-value products in technical textiles, as set by the EURATEX strategy. This is one of the means for supporting the knowledge-based European industry business and trade.
IMPACT OF DISTRIBUTED FILE SYSTEMS AND COMPUTER NETWORK TECHNOLOGIES IN ELEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
Authors: Pistirica Sorin andrei , Asavei Victor , Egner Alexandru , Poncea Ovidiu mihai
Published: February 2023

Usually high education is expensive for most of the top universities in the world. Therefore eLearning platforms provide a way of affordable education with an effective cost of investments. In the last decade, cloud computing research and adoption increased greatly due to its many advantages including economic benefits, ease of management, power saving and so on. Mainly, it provides the means to organize and deliver a wide variety of software services including eLearning environments. Along with cloud computing, file systems solutions were improved to meet requirements imposed by the distribution characteristics of clouds. The distribution level of file systems, data management, data seek methods and many other features of distributed file systems, influence performance of eLearning environments. Distributed file systems started with Andrew File System, still used today, continued with Google File System - a parallel and distributed file system suitable for Google search engine and Ceph - one of the most innovative distributed file system, developed a few years ago and considered the new dream network distributed file system. It has a very good distribution level, security, high availability and many other characteristics. Also, clouds are constructed over computer networks topologies. Basically, topologies are different types of graphs, each with a different set of advantages and disadvantages. In this article we have studied how distributed file systems over computer network clusters influence eLearning environments from an architectural point of view and how its performance may be improved. We also propose a high level architecture of cloud platforms more suitable for eLearning software by outlining several advantages that overcome issues related to distributed eLearning. In our proposed architecture, we use Ceph as a data storage environment and several domestic network topologies. In the end, we study how Software Define Network and Open Flow could model the clouds environment in a more suitable way for eLearning applications.
BUILDING THE EASY-LEARNING ONLINE PLATFORM BASED ON NEW STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGIES
Authors: Radescu Radu , Soare Bogdan
Published: February 2023

This paper describes the optimization project of the Easy-Learning platform, an original e-learning system, designed and developed since 2004 in the e-activities laboratory of the Applied Electronics and Information Engineering Department of the Polytechnic University in Bucharest. A variety of technologies have been used in this project: HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Symfony, Apache, PHP and MySQL. For the testing part a LG Optimus One Smartphone and an ipad Mini tablet have been used.

The main improvements are:
A - Rewriting most of the code from Views, forms and a part of the Symfony core, according to HTML5 standards;
B - Radical change of the interface and its optimization for intelligent phones and tablets;
C - Rewriting and optimization of the JavaScript code.

In order to scale the code to mobile devices as smart phones and tablets, we have chosen to create only one application that adapts to the kind of device it is open on. The Apache server has been configured better by applying new practices for improving speed and security. Compression reduces the response periods by reducing the size of the HTTP response. The compression is made with Gzip.

The used technique is called Responsive Web Design and Development that has created a web application offering an experience of optimal view, easy to read and navigate, with minimum resizing and loss of quality on a wide range of devices, from PC displays to mobile phones

This technique has three basic elements:
1. Fluid gridlines;
2. Flexible images;
3. Media Queries.

In order to scale a table with many columns on a mobile device, we have used Media Queries, allowing modifying the CSS depending on many conditions: ratios, widths, type of display, using the mid-width and max-width properties.

A new technique for optimizing CSS and JavaScript is concatenating and minimization of all the CSS, respectively, JavaScript files in one or maximum two, in order to reduce the HTTP requests.

The original contribution of the paper consists in the optimization process by using recent technologies in order to adapt the Easy-Learning platform to mobile devices and make it easier and more interactive for users and administrators.
IMPROVING COMPUTER ASSISTED SPEECH THERAPY THROUGH SPEECH BASED EMOTION RECOGNITION
Authors: Schipor Ovidiuandrei
Published: February 2023

Speech therapy consists in a wide range of services whose aim is to prevent, diagnose and treat different types of speech impairments. One of the most important conditions for obtaining favourable and steady results is the "immersing" of the subject as long as possible into therapeutic context: at home, at school/work, on the street. Since nowadays portable computers tend to become habitual accessories, seems a good idea to create virtual versions of human SLTs and to integrate them into these devices. However one of the main distinction between a Speech and Language Therapist (SLT) and a Computer Based Speech Therapy System (CBST) arise from the field of emotion intelligence. The inability of current CBSTs to detect emotional state of human subjects leads to inadequate behavioural responses. Furthermore, this "unresponsive" behaviour is perceived as a lack of empathy and, especially when subjects are children, leads to negative emotional state such as frustration. Thus in this article we propose an original emotions recognition framework - named PhonEM - to be integrated in our previous developed CBST - Logomon. The originality consists in both emotions representation (a fuzzy model) and detection (using only subjects' speech stream). These exceptional restrictions along with the fuzzy representation of emotions lie at the origin of our approach and make our task a difficult and, in the same time, an innovative one. As far as we know, this is the first attempt to combine these techniques in order to improve assisted speech therapy and the obtained results encourage as to further develop our CBST.
PERFORMANCE TIME FOR E-LEARNING APPLICATIONS WITH MULTIPLE DATABASES
Authors: Truica Ciprianoctavian , Boicea Alexandru , Radulescu Florin
Published: February 2023

In this paper we describe the use of multiple types of database management systems in the same e-learning application. We will present three web applications one that uses a PostgreSQL database management system, one that uses a MongoDB NoSQL management system and one that uses both. These applications have been developed using the MVC design pattern and will be used to store scientific articles. For the web application that uses the multiple database solution we will link the two databases in the controller module by using the primary keys in the PostgreSQL tables to correspond to primary keys in the MongoDB collections. We will also do stress test to determine the performance time for HTTP request so that we can conclude if it's better to use a multiple database approach over a RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) or NoSQL one. The web applications will be developed using the high-level Python Web framework Django. For a web server we have chosen Gunicorn (Green Unicorn), a pre-fork worker model Python WSGI (Web Server Gateway Interface) HTTP Server for UNIX. The Gunicorn web server will be configured to start with 20 workers so that it will accept 20 concurrent connections. The development, databases, web servers and tests have been done on an Ubuntu 12.04LST x64 operating system. The stress tests will use the httplib python module that implement the client side of the HTTP and HTTPS protocols and we will focus our attention on the read operation by testing for each application its HTTP response time. We have used thread to simulate concurrent access to the web server, each thread will use the GET method to request a page, wait for the page to load and then close the connection.
UNSUPERVISED SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATIC GRADING OF BACHELOR AND MASTER THESIS
Authors: Mosallam Yusra , Adhana Mulu weldegebreal , Rebedea Traian , Toma Lukas , Chiru Costin
Published: February 2023

This paper presents an automatic system for evaluation of Bachelor and Master thesis of Computer Science students. In order to be able to fulfill this task, we have used text complexity measures along with other factors to evaluate the students' thesis. Text complexity has been previously used to predict the students' grade level for which to assign a specific reading passage. Also, it has been used in evaluating student's writing in English language classes. However, up to our knowledge it has not been used before to evaluate scientific reports. The main challenges of this task are to select the best features that accurately reflect student's performance, and to identify the optimal classifier to predict student's grade level. To tackle the first problem, we investigated four sets of text complexity measures (lexical, syntactic, semantic, and character measures), some cohesion metrics and a couple of measures related to the thesis organization and to the references used on it. For the second challenge, we computed the correlation between the investigated measures and excluded the highly correlated ones and after that, we used a number of classifiers to predict the students' grade level and to compare their performances. Finally, we tested our work on a corpus of Bachelor and Master thesis from the students of the Computer Science Department of the Politehnica University of Bucharest that were written in English (as for English there is a high availability of supporting tools for natural language processing). We evaluated the quality of the presented application using Pearson's Rank Correlation to compare our obtained results with the students' grades assigned based on their thesis.
OUTSTANDING RESEARCH IN MOOC AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
Authors: Iapa Augustincatalin
Published: February 2023

MOOC (Massive Online Open Courses) brings new approaches in the pedagogical field and in information technologies because the education parameters have different dimensions compared with the time MOOC started developing aspects in traditional education system. 2013 was declared the MOOC year so, considering these aspects, one of the conclusions of this article is that 2014 can largely be declared also a MOOC year with a large number of new students involved in the on-line courses and new platforms of MOOC with fast growth. Given these new parameters of MOOC's approach, new systems and algorithms that facilitate work with massive number of students and new methods of measuring knowledge will be required. This article presents a statistic on recent development in MOOC and shows the main trends that promote this field. According to the statistical data presented in the article, I made a medium-term prediction of the evolution of MOOC. In addition, I treated in comparison the most important platforms in this field considering the aspects in evolution and innovation. Also some subjects that I considered interesting and treated in this article, are the main advantages of each platform what will determine the increase in the number of students and especially the number of active students. The article presents also in a short way the present development of MOOC in Romania and future plans of important actors in education. Is 2014 a year with a new collaborative MOOC platform or a year with new competing platforms? The answer to this question will determine the path of MOOC development.
HOW TO DESIGN AND EVALUATE A MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSE (MOOC) FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING.
Authors: Perifanou Maria
Published: February 2023

The arrival of Web 2.0 has changed dramatically the way that we learn and we communicate. There is a growing number of educational courses that are massive, open, participatory and support the idea of distributed intelligence and lifelong learning. They are known as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). That means that nowadays language competencies and intercultural skills are more that ever key qualifications for everyone who aims to work and live successfully in this new reality. These needs paved the way for the creation of the first "massive and open" online foreign language courses.
With no doubt Web 2.0 services can support a promising and authentic language learning environment. However the design of successful MOOCs for language learning and their evaluation is not a simple process. This paper aims to provide a guidelines for the design and evaluation of future language learning MOOCs to language teachers and instructional designers.
More specifically the paper will first present the challenges that a language instructor faces in order to design an online language course and then it will analyze the basic elements that successful online language courses should have. It will continue with a brief presentation of the shift from online language courses to "massive and open" online language courses. Next, it will follow a proposal of a framework for the design and evaluation of an efficient language learning MOOC that basically supports the individual as well as the collective learning. In the end, the author will draw some first conclusions and will share the next steps of her ongoing research.
USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN MOOC - INTEGRATION WITH THE MOODLE LCMS
Authors: Ternauciuc Andrei , Mihaescu Vlad
Published: February 2023

The aim of this paper is to study the impact social media has in the dissemination of online courses, as well as in the educational process itself, particularly with the integration of social media tools into the popular open-source Learning Content Management System Moodle. The authors offer practical examples, based on the experiment of using social media tools integrated into an existing course on a running Moodle platform.

The concept of MOOC - Massive Online Open Courses - has gained popularity in the last years, along with new supporters, as well as active users. It represents a redefining of the direction mainstream eLearning is taking, both in content and in learning typologies. Online education is appreciated by students, as it allows them to study from wherever they want (provided they have an internet connection) and almost whenever they want as long as they respect the course assignment deadlines. Collaboration and discussion forums are tools that appeal to the student body, especially if we take into account the technologies the current students grew up with.

Another widespread technology in day to day life has been social media, defined as the interaction of people by which they create, share and/or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and online social networks. One can sort social media into collaborative projects (for instance, Wikipedia), blogs and microblogs (Twitter), content communities (Youtube), social networking sites (Facebook), virtual game worlds and virtual social worlds.

The conclusions thus obtained form the basis for developing a strategy/guidebook for new and existing MOOC systems, with concrete solutions for any and all Moodle based online learning platforms.
MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE ADVICE: USING FORUMS TO TEACH EMPATHY IN SOCIAL PROFESSIONS
Authors: Rughinis Cosima , Huma Bogdana
Published: February 2023

In this paper we argue that online forums are a valuable resource for teaching and learning specific analytical skills required for empathetic understanding, especially for students in the social professions - such as sociology, social work, psychology, etc.
Empathy refers to the capacity of understanding the situation of another person - that is, understanding his or her definition of the situation and the symbolic universe in which elements of the situation become meaningful and shape actions. This capacity is cultivated through daily social interaction, and it can also be trained in educational settings. Empathy can be improved through analytical skills, consisting in the capacity to identify core symbolic elements of a persons' situation and then to reconstruct her perspective.
A key resource for cultivating the analytical skills required for empathetic understanding consists in the diversity of perspectives of multiple persons engaged in interaction on a common topic. Online forums for personal advice, such as Yahoo! Answers, offer this precious learning resource: they combine a strong diversity of perspectives with benefits of short, easy-to-read texts.
Online forums present three additional learning advantages. As opposed to live interaction, which unfolds at a high speed, making conversationalists' moves invisible to an untrained eye, written discourses can be examined in detail, at one's own pace, thus being an excellent didactic material. Second, when posting on online forums, individuals often attempt to construct intelligible stories. Last, most discussion in forums have an adversarial construction, facilitating the observation of their rhetorical construction.
In this paper we present a method for engaging students in online forums for personal advice with a structured learning agenda, in order to cultivate their abilities to make sense of the specific perspective of the person asking for advice, in light of variability in others' answers. Students learn to observe discursive alternatives in the construction of a problematic situation - such as marriage crises, health conditions, parental dilemmas. Students are also encouraged to formulate empathetic answers to persons who are asking for advice, and to reflect on the work of discursive articulation of multiple subjective worlds.
We conclude by observing that online forums can be conceptualized as massive multiplayer online advice games - engaging anonymous participants in a communicative situation with specific stakes which are influenced both by the technological constitution of the forum (for example, rules for gaining higher status as a forum member) and by the anonymized, mediated, still highly personal social interaction.
EXPERIMENTS ON TRAINING THE SOUND LOCALIZATION ABILITIES: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW
Authors: Balan Oana , Moldoveanu Florica , Morar Anca , Asavei Victor
Published: February 2023

Hearing is an extraordinary sense, as the audio signals perceived at the eardrum level of both ears build and define the entire surrounding environment. Sound is seized from all directions, and the listener can identify the distance of the sound source, the amplitude, the arrival time at each ear and the variations of amplitude that differ with changing frequencies. 3D sound can be an efficient sensory substitution method that models the elements of the physical world into relevant information for the visually-impaired people.
3D sound is generated by using spectral cues that define how a sound is perceived at a specific location. The majority of virtual-reality audio devices are based on the Head Related Transfer Function (HRTF), a mathematical transformation that describes how the sound is being modified en route from the source until it reaches the inner ear.
This article analyzes several experiments performed in order to investigate human sound localization abilities involved a training and a test session. To test the users' capability to distinguish the sound sources located at various positions in space (azimuth- in the horizontal plane and elevation- in the vertical plane), the sound was played once or several times, as the acoustic signal varied in shape (pink noise, white noise, harmonic sine wave), frequency and duration.
Some conclusion indicate that best spatial recognition is achieved by using the white pulse Gaussian noise with a duration of around 100-300ms. Pink and white noise are the most separable sounds, while sine waves are annoying and difficult to localize in the horizontal plane. In addition to this, azimuth spatial resolution is superior to elevation spatial resolution because of the stereoscopic properties of the human auditory system. Also, the sound resolution is better when the initialization phase (training session when the user listens to the sounds for several minutes) lasts longer and when the acoustic signal is periodic and of long continuous duration.
However, we recognized that there are important limitation of the experiments, that failed to take into account and investigate important aspects like sound duration, continuity and effects and also the use of structured performance feedback in the training process. We present, in this paper, brief arguments why we believe that such aspects are worth of further investigation and can lead to substantial improvements.
A CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT MODEL FOR FOSTERING COLLABORATIVE LEARNING IN THE PROCESS OF STUDENT TEACHER TRAINING ON ICT USE IN EDUCATION
Authors: Chihaia Diana , Cretu Carmen
Published: February 2023

In the context of the continuous development of technology, which nowadays has a ubiquitous character, innovative strategies involving ICT in education require new frameworks and curriculum development models. Even though these new models might be based on a solid theoretical background, by considering the advantages of technology and its metamorphose from technology - the instrument into technology - the method or technology - the medium, different approaches extend the classical views on curriculum development through providing a dynamic perspective: not only focusing on content and results but on the process and on discovery.
Part of an action research, combining qualitative and quantitative methods as well, the experimental study presented in this paper was designed and implemented by considering the above mentioned dynamic perspective in the context of student teacher training in "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University of Ia?i (UAIC), Romania. The aim of the study was to identify the factors influencing the emergence of collaborative learning in virtual environment (given our students' low level of knowledge in using ICT) and which of these factors are increasing the potential of collaboration in the process of learning how to use ICT in education.
The results corroborate our hypothesis by highlighting that the frequency of collaborative technologies usage during learning process influences the perception on the level of team work and the occurrence of team cohesion. Also, the technology and the social presence of the team members influence positively the team's adaptation to the technology features.
The conclusions of the present experimental study contributed in the final stage of suggesting a curriculum development model with eight dimensions. This model might support teachers/ professors/ trainers to infuse the training on how to use ICT in all subjects they teach. Moreover, it might overcome the digital skills gap caused by discontinuous use of ICT in education during the last three decades or by digital divide.
COMMUNICATIONS SKILLS IN SENIOR ENGINEERING STUDENTS
Authors: De castro Adela , Calle Maria , Soto Jose , Garcia Lucy , Guerra Dick
Published: February 2023

This paper presents the results of the first phase of the project that was developed in order to enhance oral and written communication skills in students coursing the last semester in engineering at the Capstone Design curse. At this level the student has completed both the basic training cycle (in which he had to study the subjects Competence Communicative 1 and 2) as the professional core and therefore expected, according to criterion 5 ABET, that a student is ready to finish off your formation with a design experience that includes multiple stages whose reach extends, in some cases, the implementation of solutions. During initial phase of the project was developed an advanced specific training to professors to provide them tools to understand the problems of oral and written expression within students. At this same stage an opinion poll was applied to students in order to know their impressions of the importance of communication skills in engineering and in particular, in the course Capstone Design. As well, a rubric was designed so that teachers could evaluate the communication skills in this first group. The Rubric designed allows rating on a scale of 5 points the quality of different aspects of communicative competence of students in relation to their Final Report. The Rubric was created from the enumeration of oral and written aspects that are deemed essential for proper support of a Final Report of a technology project.
The project is now in the second phase, which consists in training for professors, class lectures and tutorials for students. Preliminary results presented in this report show that students are fully aware of the importance and need to develop better oral and written transferable skills in not only the Capstone Design class, but also all along their career.
ONLINE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT - A PLATFORM FOR CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION IN TEACHER'S TRAINING
Authors: Dinu Minodora
Published: February 2023

In our informational society, the progress leaded by the new technologies demands quick changes and the schools needs to adjust and reform their politics and educational approaches promptly. The professional development of teachers is the most important tool for adapting and improving the education to the continuous changes. Boosted by the high evaluation criteria of the teachers, a lot of professional developments programs have emerged in training institutions and organizations, adding more pressure on Romanian teachers. As a direct effect, teachers perceive the professional development as another source of stress and frustration in their work, because they feel that such programs are ineffective and time consuming. Some of the programs have received an official or informal recognition. Unfortunately, a lot of these programs lack quality, producing only slight effects and spending lots of resources and time. Our intervention highlights the importance of online professional development, which can be a platform for creativity and innovation, emphasizing good practices. In the past years, the research about the professional development in online learning environment has kept growing. Most of papers only describe the programs, without offering a clear evaluation on the impact of the respective programs on the teachers' current practices. Our proposal shows the need for empirical research that provides program models for online teacher training and objective criteria, in order to estimate which kind of program can offer better support for creativity and changes in teacher's practices. Based on the empirical research, the online training programs can become a way to exploring new patterns of collaboration and creative teaching. Recommendations for future research on the influence of online learning environments in the professional teacher's development are offered.
TEACHING YOUNG WRITERS WITH WEB 2.0 TOOLS
Authors: Frunzeanu Mirela
Published: February 2023

Throughout history, educators have always been interested by the question of how technology can be used to transform education and enhance student learning. One of the most recent technologies that have captured the attention of many educators around the world is Web 2.0, which is also known as the read-write web.
We have to face it there is very little off-line writing or reading any more. A small minority still actually "read" or "write" in a traditional way. Under such circumstances the teachers have to adapt and to use the same learning support or creative tools as the largest number of young generation.
Youth with writing talent display distinguishing characteristics and those characteristics can be supported and enhanced using Web 2.0 tools. Online writing communities can help students connect with other writers and can offer motivational challenges such as contests and publication opportunities. Resources are available for writers of varying ages and interests; features include moderated discussions and commenting, online and hard-copy publication options, peer models, multimedia integration, as well as collaboration.
Using Web 2.0 tools, teachers can promote a writing education that not only meets 21st-century standards but also effectively meets the needs of talented writers. When all students - not just those who are gifted - feel that they have ownership in their writings or publications and have a sense of belonging to a literacy community, talent development occurs naturally, making the teacher's job easier. When used wisely, Web 2.0 tools can provide authentic learning experiences for the young writers in their own classroom.
This paper working hypothesis is that primary school students` writing competence and creativity can be increased by using the largest number of sources offered by the digital world.
INTERACTIVE TEACHING - A BASIS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION TEACHING
Authors: Mardar Sorina mihaela , Risnoveanu Adriana
Published: February 2023

As a rule, interactive teaching is regarded as a characteristic of teaching acts practiced in the undergraduate system. When teaching children or teenagers, teachers need to more actively involve their learners in the teaching process itself.
Reforming and redesigning the higher educational system bring in the limelight the teacher-student interaction even in the university's auditorium.
The arguments in favor of the above-mentioned idea could be numerous:
v The reality of the knowledge-based society in which future graduates are to function;
v Students should develop transverse competence which could entail critical and creative thinking, debating skills, personal and professional autonomy, and team working skills.
v The university campus encompasses debating and exchanging ideas.
v Nowadays, knowledge teaching does not entail an end-product any more, but building it on an 'interest area' basis manner.
v Learning through projects at the level of the higher education.
v Increasing responsibility of the higher education towards its beneficiaries providing mass access to higher education and training future experts.
Starting with these premises, the given paper will focus on the need of promoting interactive teaching at the level of the higher education, on the benefits and concrete means of implementing it. At the same time, in the present paper we are willing to focus on the perception of our students of the interactive teaching employed at "The Psycho - Pedagogical Study Program of Teachers' Certification", implying that future teacher graduates of the course will be further using interactive teaching methods in the military environment.
HOW TO TEACH AND ASSESS THE TEAMWORK COMPETENCY THROUGH E-LEARNING?
Authors: Martinez lopez Sandra , Georgeta Ion
Published: February 2023

The competency -based education meets the demands of today's working world, conditioned by constant technological changes and the primacy of the information and knowledge society, the challenge of forming increasingly competent professional education. This approach implies changes at university level, where it is not only necessary to modify the curriculum and curriculum design in general, but also to change the conception of the process by its actors.
The competency- based assessment is one of the challenges they face most teachers and requires a shift from the traditional approach based on the accumulation of knowledge to a new one based on the competences development. The competency-based assessment not only aims to improve the comprehensive or practical learning, but also provide a smooth transition to employment and giving people the skills to meet the growing challenges of today's society.
Within transversal competences defined in Tunnin Project, teamwork is one of the skills most valued by employers, businesses and graduates (National Agency for Assessment and Accreditation, RFLEX project 2008, Freire, Teijeiro and Pais 2012). Kozlowski & Bell (2003) assert the emergence of teams as basic building blocks of current organizational structures.
Being consistent with these requirements from education seeks to form this competition and the mode of e -learning is no stranger to this purpose.
This research aims to analyze the teaching - learning and competency assessment of the teamwork competency in the context of e -learning.
We used a qualitative methods based on in depth on-line interviews. The participants were teachers and coordinators currently involved in teaching and assessment practices using e-learning. The participants are academics form 5 Catalonian universities.
The investigation is still ongoing, but the expected results indicate that in the educational context of e -learning in universities can develop innovative practices that focus on teaching and learning from the perspective. The academics consider that teaching and learning the teamwork competency is a complicate task in the e-learning context. Most of them consider that the best way to achieve this competency is in a face to face environment. Moreover, there are some of the participants which agree that the team work competency could be easily teaching using tools as: wikis, webquest, social networks, among others. In relation to the assessment process, there are participants which consider that the teamwork competency is hard or even impossible to be evaluated through e-learning processes, and there are others considering that the use of rubrics, feedback processes are best ways to develop this competency.
PERCEPTION OF DISTANCE LEARNING ACQUISITIONS AND COGNITIVE LEARNING STYLES ASCERTAINING STUDY IN ROMANIAN ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT
Authors: Stan Maria magdalena , Paisilazarescu Mihaela , Tudor Sofia loredana
Published: February 2023

Distance learning is a modern form of education that offers an alternative to the initial and continuous training (development / specialization) for certain types of specializations.
This educational alternative successfully used in the American educational system and also in the educational systems in Europe begins to shyly take shape also in Romania. The flexibility training process, the diversity of multimedia technologies used with the specific type of relationship that is established between educational actors often mediated by computer seem to offer advantages of this alternative education. Still distance learning in Romania faces reticence on both legislative level, of coherent educational policy, and social-level perception from those who want training, but also from the trainers.
Although the distance learning presents adaptive ways to the dynamic needs of modern society, the following question arises: what are the internal mechanisms underlying these beliefs?
Starting from the idea empirically recognized that learning style influences the acquisition mode of learning, this study investigates the relationship between cognitive style of the students' learning and perception of learning acquisitions in distance learning. Research conducted by questionnaire survey method based on a batch of 62 students, used as investigative tools - KLSI (1985) to investigate cognitive learning style, also a questionnaire developed by us to identify the perception of distance learning acquisition.
Research results lead to the fact that cognitive learning style influences the perception of distance learning acquisition. The practical implications of the study aim diversified and dynamic action to activate autonomy in learning through self-study as a step princeps of distance learning.
ADVERTISING PSYCHOLOGY VERSUS LIFELONG LEARNING
Authors: Stefanescumihaila Ramona olivia
Published: February 2023

Every time we open a newspaper or we turn on the TV, we see sellers of almost identical products spending huge amounts of money in order to convince consumers to buy their brands. Advertisers are not in a position to enforce consumption on a target group, but they have the power to dominate by transmitting their messages through television programmes, magazines and other media. Having proven its force in the movement of economic goods and services, nowadays, advertising has been directed in increasing quantity towards matters of social concern. Furthermore, modern advertising is a complex segment of urban industrial civilization, reflecting contemporary life in its real aspects.
Advertising has changed in its culture, due largely to the switch from informational to a more expressive conceptual way of communication with consumers. This change has offered the audience less cognition about products and more sensory orientated heuristics about positions, branding and ethical standards of companies.
The purpose of the research is to develop a framework for an analysis of new media advertising that focuses on its social implications and its switch from a pure contextual aspect to hybrid, a bridge between types of informational and emotional advertising which refined the way consumers make decisions about products and services. This assessment will perform analyses of a real balance between ways to persuade consumers and, their belief and feelings.
Is advertising a business or a risk? What does the advertising professional rely on when "giving life" to a product? to what extent will the psycho-sociology of a commercial influence competitiveness? When a product is far from convincing, will advertising resort to manipulation, creating "new needs"? How difficult is to preserve one's personality on a market where selling and buying is done through the eyes of the "watcher" - an accomplished creator continuously fighting a psychological struggle for a place in the consumer's mind?