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Romania:

Universitatea POLITEHNICA din Bucuresti (UPB)

University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest (www.pub.ro) (UPB) is the most important and the largest technical university of Romania, with more than 180 years of existence. UPB offers specialisations in 11 faculties of long-term studies (5 years), 2 technical university colleges of short-term studies (3 years) and several departments: Department of Engineering Sciences in foreign languages, Department of Bioengineering and Biotechnology, Department of Distance Learning (DECIDE).

The UPB academic community is actively involved in research, education and training programmes. One can consider important participations in all the EU programmes (Leonardo da Vinci, Socrates, Phare, FP5&6), bilateral programmes with well-known European technical universities, and, of course from USA or Canada, World Bank education programmes.

Many academic groups from faculties, departments or the numerous research&education/training centres have experience and expertise in e learning. For the time being the e-learning is developed via Intranet structure, with accessibility only from the University campus, but it can always be expanded function of the financial means.

The instructional technology approaches to Independent Learning at the UPB are based on: correspondence study (text-book and other written material); TV assisted teaching (Telecourses; TV cable stations; VCR), and multimedia interactive courseware (CD-ROM). The UPB creates telecourses in areas where courses are scarce and in which television has an obvious advantage.

The UPB develops computerized, interactive supplementary learning facilities that combine text, image, video and sound (CD-ROM, diskettes). Several multimedia courseware programs, displays and assisting material, are currently being developed in various fields of study. In addition, selected multimedia courseware, produced by others, is adapted and integrated into the UPB courses.

There are many projects in progress in UPB in connection with the e-learning technology. The most important are:

The Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) project is an experimental project in which each student is connected to the central system and to each other through a modem and communication software Integrated Educational Technology Environment

This R&D project aims at developing innovative learning environments with the intent of combining the benefits from all existing technologies and modes of distance teaching. The focus is on developing the necessary instructional and educational foundations for tomorrow's state-of-the-art learning centers, including the home and the work place as required for Life Long Learning (LLL).