Information Technology Reference
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IntroductIon
flexible, high quality and financially affordable
paths of study, for easy and rapid access to the
most appropriate educational facilities and to the
most appropriate lecturers and trainers to satisfy
specific needs. A good opportunity in front of
such expectations stands in web-based education,
which exploits the facilities provided by the latest
developments in communication and information
technologies to remotely access, either off-line
and/or on-line, real and virtual labs, libraries,
documentation, tutorials, seminars, courses, etc.
(e.g. Bhatt, Tang, Lee & Knovi, 2009; Callaghan,
Harkin, McGinnity & Maguire, 2008; Du, Li &
Li, 2008, Ebner & Walder, 2008; Helander &
Emami, 2008).
Provision of web-based courses is not a simple
task (Finger, Gelman, Fay & Szczerban, 2005; Lau,
Mak & Ma, 2006; Li & Wang, 2007). Beyond the
immanent technological challenges, there are other
issues that require meticulous treatment. In this
respect, a web-based course should be viewed as
an educational product that asks for high quality on
four generic development axes: need-requirement
axis, education provider axis, study program axis
and teaching-learning process axis (Popescu, Brad
& Popescu, 2006). The needs and related require-
ments are closely linked to the challenges that
students encounter onto the workforce market,
characterized by high fluidity and volatility. The
education providers should permanently adapt
their study programs to the latest technological
developments and to the newest approaches in
education. The teaching-learning process should
be strongly directed towards students, offering
them the possibility of customising the learning
process and its outcomes. The four axes should
be simultaneously tackled and the process should
consider the dynamics of the need-requirements
axis. Because the life-cycles of most engineering
courses are very short, there is a major concern
on designing and developing high-quality courses
from the very first time; that is, a concern for effec-
tive and efficient engineering course design. Web-
based engineering courses rise up supplementary
Today's evolutions in science and technology
lead to a rapid depreciation rate of knowledge
in engineering. There are areas where this rate is
less than one year; however, countless opinions
consider an average depreciation rate of knowl-
edge in engineering around three years. Producing
companies operate in environments influenced by
globalization, emphasising horizontal integration,
innovation and customer satisfaction, while focus-
ing on small number of business areas. In this very
demanding economic environment, producing
companies expect from engineers to excel from
graduation to retirement. Therefore, continuous
training of engineers is vital for ensuring business
competitiveness from technological perspectives,
this issue subjecting engineering education to
tremendous pressures, either directly or indirectly.
The very wide areas in engineering study rise
up many challenges on how to approach properly
the educational process. Experience clearly shows
there is no general pattern for success. Depend-
ing on the subject area, personalized models and
means are required to maximize the impact of
the educational process (Barros, Read & Verdejo,
2008; Brad, 2005; Ogot & Okudan, 2007; Popescu,
Brad & Popescu, 2006). It should be also noticed
that specific engineering theory needs to be re-
formulated and often interrelated with elements
from other theories, with practical knowledge and
with skills development before it can be applied in
real-life problem solving (Brackin, 2002; Kolmos
& Du, 2008; Yeo, 2008). For example, in engi-
neering education, skills development includes
many other aspects than technical or technological
ones, like: team working, communication, project
management, learning to learn, visioning, change
management, leadership (Hutchings, Hadfield,
Horvath & Lewarne, 2007; Kaminski, Ferreira
& Theuer, 2004).
Dynamics of changes in the economic en-
vironment determines both undergraduate and
postgraduate students in engineering to look for
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