Asynchronous e-Learning Platform used for Psychological Research in a Military Environment

摘要

During the last years, the observed success of e-learning platforms, has created an increasing demand for e-learning suites in universities, academic institutions, schools and companies, which has led to design and development of a large number of commercial and open source synchronous and asynchronous e-learning platforms. Nowadays, more than 650 learning management systems are out in the market, but only a few have more than five percent (5%) market share. Each new e-learning platform presents its own learning model and the comparison between the e-learning platforms becomes more and more difficult. How to choose the most suitable one, even if it is important, is not always an easy task. The choice is like that for any enterprise system and it can change the whole organizational culture. Some of the most popular asynchronous e-learning systems, which are used worldwide are listed and briefly presented with reference to the feedback module it provides to its users. Of course, the main goal of this work is the investigation of the Moodle e-learning platform effectiveness during an opinion poll research in the psychology field. During the research its goal is saving: a) money by conducting the specific research online, b) space by electronically storing the questionnaires, c) time by avoiding waste of education time and d) process automation by extracting and processing questionnaire data. In addition to the particular cases relating to the questionnaires distributed to students who are studying in one of the highest military educational institutions of the country, the present work also describes some general points relating to the functionality and the selection of the specific platform.