The IT-Based Educational System (SEI) - National Program of the Ministry of Education, Research and Innovation

The SEI Program represents the outcome of education strategy of the Romanian Government for improving the education system.

Presentation

SEI - The IT-Based Educational System is an ambitious project initiated by the Romanian Ministry of Education, Research and Innovation and since 2001, it has been integrated as a key component in the educational reform in Romania. The project focuses on digital literacy of the population through the young population and the introduction and adoption of technology in education, as well as ICT support for teaching/learning management activities.

Introducing ICT resources in the Romanian schools represented the mandatory step in creating an authentic knowledge society, competitive at European and global level.

Objectives

The main objective of the project was to provide equal access for all students and teachers in pre-universitary education to modern teaching and learning tools. Romanian schools have today at least one IT laboratory equipped with cutting-edge technology, thus increasing the quality of education.

The purpose of the IT-based Educational System was to encourage innovative teaching and to stimulate the creativity of both students and teachers. It provides an environment that favors the development of projects and the participation of all of the system's beneficiaries in the further advancement of IT. The IT-based Educational System contributes to the improvement of the curriculum thanks to the integration of modern teaching-learning methods.

Methodology

As a strategic program of the Ministry of Education, SEI covers all major activities in the educational sector:

• Pedagogy – teaching and learning, testing and evaluation, management of educational content, training and life-long training programs for teachers.
• School resources management.
• National education management - ICT support for the national examinations, the National Education Database, the School Map Portal.
• Communication and collaboration – including a National Educational Portal, www.portal.edu.ro

The users and beneficiaries are located at several levels (local, regional, and national, each of them comprising several sub-levels) and include teachers, students, parents, managers, operators, decision-makers and the general public.

Implementation

The educational projects implemented at national level for improving the education system included:

• Installation and configuration in each school of complete educational solutions for the teaching-learning process composed of IT laboratories equipped with eLearning solutions, school administration software and educational multimedia eContent. 13.181 schools and 42 regional training centers received until now 192.705 computers, servers and laptops.
• Elaboration of 3,647 AeL eContent lessons (totalling 16,000 learning objects) - and their distribution in all the SEI laboratories, together with 16 dictionaries: explanatory, orthographic, synonyms, antonyms, Romanian-English-French etc.; encyclopaedias and glossaries of terms, movies, art, poetry and theatre, Encyclopaedia Britannica – the concise edition etc. Teachers are empowered to author their own content with specialized authoring tools: editors for mathematic expressions, geometry graphics, function graphics, chemistry, tests and questions.
• School curricula management integrated with the AeL educational library and with the organizational structure.
• Development of IT projects for supporting the national examinations: ADLIC (high school and vocational schools admission exams), National Baccalaureate Examination, Teachers’ nomination upon vacant positions, etc.
• Technical support for all teachers;
• Implementation of a document and workflow management system in the Ministry connecting the central sites to the 42 regional County School Inspectorates;
• Development and administration of the SEI Educational Portal as the main web-based communication centre between the education management, teachers, pupils, parents, regional and school administration and the general public. With 130,000 registered users on http://portal.edu.ro, 2,500,000 unique visitors per month, over 6,000 articles and 1,000,000 messages posted on the discussion forums, the portal represents the most important source of information, collaboration and communication in education and includes a large series of individual web sites, including educational resources, interactive digital educational content and information about education projects, examinations and many more.
• Intensive and extensive training of 141,750 system administrators and teachers for integrating ITC resources in education.
• Development and implementation of national IT systems for management of key administrative projects: the baccalaureate (1.300.000 candidates examined during 2003-2009), the Teachers’ nomination upon vacant positions (over 392.748 teachers examined during 2003 - 2009); the examination and admission in high schools of each generation of 14 year old students; management of social aid programs.

SEI project has successfully accomplished four phases of implementation, each one being developed as a strategic step for improving the Romanian educational system.

Accomplishments and results

Romanian education before computerization of schools:

• 1,321,333 students registered in 12,709 schools;
• 687,919 students registered in 1,357 high schools;
• 64,018 teachers in high schools;
• 102,294 teachers in schools;
• 3 PC's for 100 students in schools;
• 5 PC's for 100 students in high schools;
• 3,5 PC's connected to the Internet for 100 students.

Romanian education system today:

• 7 million users and stakeholders implied in the project: students, teachers, administrative personnel, parents, decision makers, specialists in education;
• 15,000 IT laboratories deployed with cutting-edge technology;
• 192,000 desktops and laptops provided in schools;
• more than 3,700 learning units, over 16,000 reusable learning objects (RLO’s), based on 21 subjects;
• over 2,000 schools connected to Internet;
• SEI Educational Portal (http://portal.edu.ro) - 130,000 registered users, over 1,000,000 messages;
• over 1.800.000 secondary school graduates in the contest for high-school admission (ADLIC) 2001-2009;
• more than 1.300.000 twelve grade candidates to Baccalaureate (2003-2009)
• 369 specialised IT and AeL trainers certificated (2004-2008).

An independent study, carried out at national level during August 2007 – May 2008 by the University of Bucharest in collaboration with the Institute for Education Sciences, Centre for Innovation and Development in Education (TEHNE) and the Association for Education Sciences (ASTED), reveals the positive impact that SEI Project has on the Romanian education system, both from students’ and teachers’ perspective:

• • 82% of teachers from urban pre-universitary schools use the SEI laboratories;
• • 95% of the students declare they would want to use more the computer and the Internet for lessons on various disciplines;
• • 70,2% of teachers reveal the positive impact that ICT has on the learning performance at their discipline;
• • 90% of pupils consider that young people who do not have access to a computer will be disadvantaged later;
• • 83% of the teachers which participated in a specialized course relate a positive impact on students regarding the use of ICT.

For more information, visit the IT-based Educational Portal or download the SEI brochure in PDF format.