Improving problem solving skills, preparing for solving non-routine tasks, working in projects and keeping up with permanently changing requirements, are expectations that higher education students can fulfill if they know their learning strengths and weaknesses and the strategies that are the most effective for their own learning processes. An important factor for developing quality multimedia materials is that future developers should know the learning preferences and applicable strategies of potential students in details and should also be able to look critically on the products developed by others and to the added value of their own and others contributions.

In this paper we worked out a project strategy and a web-based collaborative teaching/learning methodology for students taking the course „Designing multimedia materials” at ELTE University, based on: (a) generating student profile, (b) online knowledge building and (c) evaluation methods. Applied methodology integrates the e-learning preferences of learning style dimensions and takes into consideration the students’ expectations. Knowledge building was realized by means of the online learning environment. Developing critical thinking and monitoring own learning progress was carried out by self-evaluation and peer-evaluation of own products and those created by others. To identify learning styles we used the most widely accepted models.

Really good teachers always make an effort utilize the school equipment available to the maximum. They realize newer and newer ideas, try out methods learnt from others, explore and take possession of new technology; all of that in order to secure efficient conveyance of knowledge in a way that their students also enjoy the classes.

In this effort the arrival of the computer opened up new dimensions. This new device provides such opportunities for today’s teachers as previous generations of pedagogues could never even dream of. A properly equipped computer in itself makes possible the infinite enlargement of methodological repertoire, but the continuous development of hardware and software almost weekly provides further possibilities of application.

This study analyzes the way teachers in public education relate to the utilization of ICT (information and communication technologies) devices in class, with special emphasis on the interactive board. It will introduce to the reader certain results of our national ICT survey, carried out at the beginning of 2009 by way of an online questionnaire, in the course of which 1146 primary and secondary school teachers in approximately 400 settlements answered our questions. In our earlier studies we realized that the application of ICT devices in class is characterized by the dichotomy of theory and practice, in that the two areas frequently show significant differences. During the survey it was established that there is indeed an enormous gap between the principles maintained by the interviewees and their daily practice. Such data we then supplemented with the replies to questions on the advantages and disadvantages of using a computer in order to provide a more specific description of the factors determining the discrepancies between theory and practice. We also examined what changes teachers deem necessary to enhance the application of IT devices in class. Our results bear significance for the possible establishment and development of various training and further education programs.

The main topics of the one semester long database management subject are the data modeling and the SQL language. On the sphere of the data modeling we teach the entity-relationship and the relational model. Both in the teaching of the data modeling and in the teaching of the SQL language we use freeware or open source graphical programs.

We also did a survey to see whether it results significantly better solutions if the students do the data models with graphical programs and whether there’s a significant difference in the correctness of the data models made by different programs.