Digital storytelling platforms have proven to be a great way of bringing cultural heritage closer to people. What lacks is a deeper understanding of the user experience of such systems, especially in multi-platform digital storytelling. For the last three years, we have been developing a project called Spotlight Heritage Timisoara, which is at its core a digital storytelling platform for the city of Timisoara (Romania), soon to be European Capital of Culture in 2023. The project consists of a website, mobile applications, and interactive museographic and street exhibitions. This paper presents a multi-platform usability evaluation study which employed semi-structured interviews, observations, think-aloud protocol, SUS questionnaire, Net Promoter Score and Product Reaction Cards to gather insights from 105 participants and reveal usability problems in the Spotlight Heritage context. We found out that the four platforms, i.e., interactive touchscreen table, desktop/laptop, mobile and Augmented Reality, have very good usability scores, are considered accessible and useful, work seamlessly together, and create user satisfaction and loyalty, across demographic groups, having the potential to bring people closer to cultural heritage.

Testing the usability of a Moodle-based learning platform has been done many times before. Countless case-studies have identified weak points in the ever popular open-source system and sometimes, found solutions. Comparisons were made with other popular learning management systems (LMS), either commercial or free and open-source, with mixed results. These comparisons were usually employed as the tools for choosing one LMS over another, in the preliminary phase of adopting or developing a new e-learning platform. However, if the platform already exists, and has been functioning for a decent number of years, is it still necessary to test its usability? Considering that Moodle is currently on a bi-annual cycle for official releases and the online world is a very dynamic environment in need of constant adapting, the answer seems to be affirmative. Then, what are the main ways in which to test the usability of a learning platform (Moodle in particular), with its own characteristics which sets it apart from the general considerations of a web platform? Which of these methods are best suited for the different types of analyses we call “usability”? These are some of the questions that this paper tries to answer by analyzing the needs for usability testing and subsequently proposing a testing strategy for the “Campus Virtual” e-learning platform, the official online tool for managing the learning process in the Politehnica University Timisoara.

Current research proves that using a virtual campus as a learning management system (LMS) can increase the students' sense of community and enhance student performance, all the while LMSs have become a main component of how traditional teaching universities interact online with their students. We developed our university virtual campus CVUPT continuously since 2008, based on new technological developments but also on new Open Education Tools. Since our university is a research-oriented university, we used data to inform and guide an LMS review and strategic development process. This paper analyzes the use of this Moodle based virtual campus by a traditional university and how the implementation of different Web 2.0 technologies as open education tools have affected students-teacher interaction.

Society expects from the educational system to provide a new type of worker able to learn independently, online for their entire life - the new open life long learning student, but the traditional higher education is not equipped for this. Recently one possible solution was the development of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). While in Europe the MOOCs development are still behind the North American ones, in Romania they are non-existent. Started in 2014 the development of Romanian MOOC - UniCampus - by the Politehnica University of Timisoara is now running its first courses. This paper presents a course in Trends in Open Education, Tools and Technologies, developed by a group of professors with limited experience in online education, from its initial development phases to its first pilot. The course evaluation shows that shorter videos, short essay answers are preferred by students, multiple choice test are recommended after each course unit or video and they considered the UniCampus environment as familiar and easy to use (being based on Moodle, the platform most of students used also during their degree).

Information found nowadays on the World Wide Web is generally regarded as limitless. Hence emerged the need to find methods for organizing data in order to get better information retri ...