MOODLE E-LEARNING SYSTEM AND STUDENTS' PERFORMANCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION: THE CASE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION PROGRAMMES

The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and therefore e-learning is becoming an ever more frequently used teaching and learning technique at all levels of education. In higher education, it completely or partially substitutes the classical teaching methods. It provides richer resources than the traditional classroom and overcomes its limitations (time and space). In some cases, it has proved to be very effective. Some authors, however, also point out that e-learning requires highly self-regulated and independent students or their e-learning performance may be low. The purpose of the paper is to analyse how introduction of the e-learning system Moodle as part of the teaching process is related with students' performance, i.e. the average grade and the average number of admissions to the exams. We also examined the same relationship among different groups of students (based on selected individual socio-demographic factors). The study included a member of the University of Ljubljana (Faculty of Administration) with public administration programmes as our sample in the period from 2008 till 2014. The results of the analysis (using a t-test) show a significant improvement in performance (a higher average grade and lower average number of admissions) at the different (faculty-, student-and course-) levels after introducing the Moodle e-learning platform. The data show that the greatest improvement is seen among students with lower high school grades. The results can serve as important guidelines for university management when further investigating how to enhance students' performance on different levels when employing modern ICT solutions in the teaching process.