COMPARING E-LEARNING PLATFORMS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF FACILITATING ACTIVE AND COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

The last decade of research on how to create and manage efficient educational processes indicates significant improvements. The shift from traditional learning to learner-centered education has led to the implementation of various learning environments supported with strong online functionalites. Therefore, at present, the E-Learning systems at individual level, not just at the generation level, tend to be increasingly complex, integrating multiple facilities such as audio and video content distribution, live streaming, chat, exercises and tests, discussion forums, integration with other platforms and so on. The intense development of E-Learning platforms makes it difficult to differentiate between them, often the possibilities offered to the users being almost similar. In addition, the existence of a large number of E-Learning systems determines the difficulty in dividing them taking into account well-defined criteria. The present paper aims to expose the results obtained by performing a comparative analysis between some of the most popular platforms that are created and primarily used for educational purposes, from the perspective of facilitating active and collaborative learning. From a methodological point of view, the analysis in this case is based both on qualitative research, necessary in order to provide a better understanding on the addressed subject, as well as on the direct observation on the reality, in an attempt to obtain significant information following the comparative analysis performed.