In my master's thesis, I wanted to research the opinion of parents at Dornberk Primary School regarding the web-based application eAsistent, which is used to monitor children's schooling and to enable communication between parents and the school. I was interested in what was the parents’ most common purpose for the use of the web-based application and what were in their opinion the advantages and disadvantages of it, as well as theoretical support in the field of education.
In the theoretical part, I firstly presented and defined the information and communication technology (hereinafter ICT), and how it affects education. I focused mainly on the characteristics of ICT as a means of enabling communication in the context of schooling. With the help of professional literature and numerous articles, I defined the concepts of electronically supported communication and presented the advantages and disadvantages of it. The target group of the research in this master's thesis were parents, who use the web-based application eAsistent, thus I also presented the possible forms of cooperation between parents and schools in the theoretical part of the thesis. I looked for advantages and disadvantages, and presented in detail modern online tools that allow communication between schools and parents. Since the eAsistent web-based application is used for communication in our school system and in the school that was included in my research, I presented its characteristics.
I obtained the empirical data using a survey questionnaire, which was distributed to the parents at the Dornberk Primary School via the web-based application eAsistent. I was interested if some parents use the application more frequently than others and what was their opinion about the complexity and safety of the application. I enquired about the relationship between parents and the school, as well as the relationships between them and their children when introducing and using eAsistent. The results showed that parents are satisfied with the schools’ decision to use eAsistent, and that the web-based application enables them to save time while performing their daily parental role in the school space. Parents stated that the biggest disadvantage is that the online application reduces personal contact between them and the school, which does not coincide with the finding that parents attend parent-teacher meetings just as often as before. I also discovered that parents use the application eAsistent equally often, regardless of their child’s age.
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