A year ago, the covid-19 pandemic broke the paradigms of those who work with face-to-face education in Higher Education. For the Secretariat of Distance Education of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (SEDIS / UFRN), which has been working with the promotion of distance education for 17 years and encouraging the use of information and communication technologies as a teaching and learning tool, it was the time to share expertise and assist UFRN academic units in new challenges.
The adoption of Emergency Remote Education by the upper management of UFRN, as an alternative to social distance measures, mobilized professionals from SEDIS / UFRN on several fronts. As a result, distance courses were created for virtual learning environments (AVASUS, AVAProgesp / UFRN and AVAProex / UFRN) and there was the production of ICT Mediated Teaching Notebooks, called Information and Communication Technologies.
According to UFRN’s Distance Education Secretary, Carmem Rêgo, “this was a solution found to meet the needs of face-to-face courses in maintaining their educational routines and SEDIS offered to provide this support”. She also clarified that Emergency Remote Education is also based on technological tools, but unlike the distance learning modality, remote classes and activities are applied for a specific period of time.
From March 2020 until now, 10 ICT Mediated Teaching Notebooks have been produced. These publications guided the pedagogical practices of teachers, not only from UFRN but also from other places in Brazil. These contents are available on eduCAPES, a portal maintained by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), of the Ministry of Education.
Notebook number 10, recently published, with the theme: “Propositions and tutorials for the use of Digital Resources in remote classes”, emerged from an extension project coordinated by Professor Letícia dos Santos Carvalho, responsible for subjects in the area of Education of the Faculty of Engineering, Letters and Social Sciences of Seridó (FELCS), installed in November last year, in Currais Novos.
According to Letícia Carvalho, the project “The use of Digital Technologies of Information and Communication (TDIC) in the elaboration of didactic products” supported the initial and continued training of teachers, in the construction of activities aligned with the school reality. Notebook 10, developed in collaboration with 3 undergraduate students, helps in the process of developing school activities in a world that is increasingly connected by digital tools.
Born in Espírito Santo, a city in the interior of Rio Grande do Norte with a little more than 10,400 inhabitants, Maria Rosângela Costa Chaves reaches 40 years old with the certainty that Distance Education was a watershed in her life. She has just joined a Professional Master’s Course in Geography at the Centro de Ensino Superior do Seridó (CERES / UFRN). In the week that we celebrate International Women’s Day, we will tell one more of these inspiring stories that only distance education can provide.
Before talking about this recent achievement, Maria Rosângela recalls the time when she was an academic at the UFRN Center in Nova Cruz / RN: “I worked in two shifts and was the mother of a child, still small, it was impossible to move to the University in the capital and be able to follow the classroom classes ”. She says that she had the constant monitoring of the professors of the disciplines, tutors in person and at a distance, with the opportunity to resolve all doubts.
Rosângela completed her degree in Geography in 2011 and has since pursued her dream of pursuing a Master’s degree. Between one attempt and another, he was collecting specializations in the areas of Environmental Education and Geography of the Semiarid Region (IFRN), Municipal Management of Education (UFPB), Biological Sciences (Faculdade Santa Cecília) and Early Childhood Education and Literacy (ISEP). But the curriculum lacked the Master’s course. When she was very close to achieving this goal, a health problem in the family forced her to postpone the goal.
But, in January 2021, ten years after the conclusion of Higher Education, she was summoned to occupy one of the GEOPROF places at CERES / UFRN: “I know that the GEOPROF Master will be very important for my teaching, I will improve myself, even more , as a Geography teacher, through more consistent pedagogical practices, based on geographic scientific knowledge ”. Doctorate and post-doctorate, after completing the master’s degree, these will be your next steps.
The Assistant Secretary of Distance Education at UFRN, Ione Morais, who is a professor in the Department of Geography at the University, distance learning and a master’s degree, does not hide the pride of the former distance education student: “I would like to highlight Rosângela Costa, a student from the first class of Licenciatura in Geography at Distance from the Pole of Nova Cruz, which today is a master’s student in the Graduate Program in Geography – GEOPROF, an initiative in which I participated in the condition of its creator.
Still according to Ione Morais, being Rosângela’s teacher in this new stage of her formative journey is a reunion that makes her happy and reaffirms the convictions that Distance Education has the power to revolutionize people and places, fulfilling a unique role of spreading Teaching Higher education and to enable the realization of dreams and life projects, which only found the conditions to materialize through technology-mediated education.
A partnership between the Laboratory of Technological Innovation in Health (LAIS / UFRN) and the Secretariat of Distance Education of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (SEDIS / UFRN) will enable the offer of a series of new courses in the Virtual Learning Environment of Dean of Extension (Mandacaru AVAProex) at UFRN. The courses are also hosted in the SUS Virtual Learning Environment (AVASUS) and will now be shared with the entire academic community and society in general. In this first shipment, 20 free online courses were launched.
The courses cover health-related topics, such as: “Basic Life Support”, “Suicide Prevention”, “Early Stimulation” and “Breastfeeding in the context of covid-19”. They also have options in the areas of Education and Social Interactions, such as: “Basic Knowledge of Distance Education”, “Father Present – Care and Commitment” and “The Importance of Play and Family Participation for Child Development”.
Enrollments must be made from next Monday, March 8, 2021, via the Integrated System for the Management of Academic Activities (SIGAA). In the Extension tab, click on view “Courses or Events” and search for the courses you want to register. Then, click on subscribe, if you are registered with SIGAA, enter your email and password, otherwise, go to “I don’t have a registration yet!” and make your registration. To answer any questions, you can access this video tutorial.
According to UFRN’s Secretary of Distance Education, Carmem Rêgo, the Mandacaru AVAProex / UFRN was developed by the SEDIS / UFRN Team, which has expertise in customizing these virtual environments: “we are, in this way, democratizing even more access to free knowledge and open, which in the cases of these courses has the seal of AVASUS, a platform with more than 694 thousand registered users and more than 1.5 million enrollments ”.
Started in October 2018, with the launch of the new Formar MP Project platform, the partnership between the Public Ministry of Rio Grande do Norte (MPRN) and the Distance Education Secretariat of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (SEDIS / UFRN ) achieved good results and will be expanded in 2021. This is what the Coordinator of the Center for Studies and Functional Improvement (CEAF), the Prosecutor Marcus Aurélio de Freitas Barros, tells us with enthusiasm. He took stock of the work done so far.
The collaboration gave rise to CEAF’s new Virtual Learning Environment (VLAE), with interactive resources that enabled the agency’s employees to join basic and continuing education courses offered at a distance. According to the CEAF Coordinator, there were more than 40,000 accesses, from the launch of the platform until the end of 2020, with a reach of 4,000 students in 117 classes and a total of 9,000 class hours distributed throughout the training.
For the Prosecutor, Marcus Aurélio de Freitas Barros, these are very expressive results and he adds: “another great result was the possibility of offering, via AVA, a course for all Guardian Counselors in the State of Rio Grande do Norte, the that contributes to the performance of this body in the most qualified protection for the children and adolescents of RN ”.
National Recognition
The connection with SEDIS / UFRN arose with the need to migrate a model of traditional, face-to-face training with limited concrete effects to a model for the realization of consistent continuous training in strategic areas, fully customized to the needs and reality of MPRN , clarifies the CEAF Coordinator, who also highlights the expertise, structure, quality and competence of SEDIS / UFRN as decisive factors to establish this cooperation.
National recognition was not long in coming. In November 2020, the Formar MP Project obtained, in its category, the third place in the CNMP Award, the most relevant award from the Brazilian Public Ministry. The initiative of the National Council for the Public Ministry was created to give visibility to the programs and projects that stood out the most in the implementation and alignment of the National Strategic Planning.
Goals for 2021
In 2021, still under the effect of the changes caused by the covid-19 pandemic, the Formar MP Project will contribute to the CEAF / MPRN being transformed into an “Institutional School”, with teaching, research and extension practices, with the production of courses that follow the logic of learning trails. Also being planned is the production of a public management course for the new managers and teams from the municipalities that took office earlier this year.
According to the Secretary of Distance Education at UFRN, Carmem Rêgo, this is the role of the university with regard to distance education: contributing to the continuing education of professionals and enabling, thus, maintaining the quality of the services provided to the citizens served by the Public Ministry of RN. “We are happy to be part of this success story and we are available to continue to follow, together, the paths of distance education for the development of our state”, he concluded.
Bruno Cássio – SEDIS / UFRN Media Sector
Remember the presentation event of the new MPRN VLAE.
