Regional Distance Education Centre

The Regional Distance Education Centre (CSID) has been, since 1998, a department of the Polytechnic University of Timisoara which aims to organise, support and supervise all distance education in the university. Through the Regional Distance Education Centre, the university arranges and supports study programs for distance education and distance online teaching for

• Information Technology
• Audio-Video and Multimedia Technologies
• International Master in Multimedia.

The main activities developed by CSID are:

• Analysis of the results of distance education
• Identifying training needs
• Training university teachers in the use of learning software and in the production of teaching materials using advanced learning technologies, based on courses offered by European organisations for distance learning and course units already developed in Romania.
• Training university administrators in the quality assurance field of the learning process
• Producing teaching and training materials for distance learning in Romanian
• Running ODL for professional conversion courses and other higher education programs leading to university qualifications culminating in graduation exams.
• Developing support system for studying.

CSID was the first to introduce a virtual learning environment (VLE) in Romania and to integrate online learning modules and mobile learning for students in higher education. Developed since 2000, CSID is now a VLE that contains: Academic Management (an interface for student administration), Academic support for learning (online courses, online laboratory documents in various electronic formats, and podcasting) and Communication (forum, blog, wiki, messaging and SMS).

The web site is at http://www.csid.upt.ro