Linking Old Librarianship to New: Aligning 5-Steps of The Innovator's DNA in Creating Thematic Discovery Systems for the Everglades

This poster presentation from the May 2015 Florida Library Association Conference, along with the Everglades Explorer discovery portal at http://ee.fiu.edu, demonstrates how traditional bibliographic and curatorial principles can be applied to: 1) selection, cross-walking and aggregation of metadata linking end-users to wide-spread digital resources from multiple silos; 2) harvesting of select PDFs, HTML and media for web archiving and access; 3) selection of CMS domains, sub-domains and folders for targeted searching using an API. Choosing content for this discovery portal is comparable to past scholarly practice of creating and publishing subject bibliographies, except metadata and data are housed in relational databases. This new and yet traditional capacity coincides with: Growth of bibliographic utilities (MarcEdit); Evolution of open-source discovery systems (eXtensible Catalog); Development of target-capable web crawling and archiving systems (Archive-it); and specialized search APIs (Google). At the same time, historical and technical changes – specifically the increasing fluidity and re-purposing of syndicated metadata – make this possible. It equally stems from the expansion of freely accessible digitized legacy and born-digital resources. Innovation principles helped frame the process by which the thematic Everglades discovery portal was created at Florida International University. The path -- to providing for more effective searching and co-location of digital scientific, educational and historical material related to the Everglades -- is contextualized through five concepts found within Dyer and Christensen’s “The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the five skills of disruptive innovators (2011). The project also aligns with Ranganathan’s Laws of Library Science, especially the 4th Law -- to "save the time of the user.”

A Basic Interpretive Study of the Experiences of University Students Who Have Dropped or Failed an Online Course

Online courses have increased in enrollments over the past few decades. As the number of students taking online courses have increased, so has the number of students who have dropped or failed an online course. According to the literature, online courses may have higher drop rates than traditional, face-to-face courses. The number of students who fail an online course is, also, of concern. As online courses may continue to grow over the next few decades, studies on persistence in online courses may benefit students, administrators, instructional designers, educators, and researchers. Although previous research studies have addressed persistence in online courses, very few examine it from the perspectives of students who were unsuccessful in their courses. These students may have unique insights about the online experience that may have related to their lack of success. The purpose of this study was to understand the experiences of university students who have failed or dropped an online course through the lenses of transactional distance theory and Kember’s model of dropout in distance education. Transactional distance theory discusses the dialog, structure, and learner autonomy involved in an online course, while, Kember’s model presents categories that may relate to dropping an online course. Together, the theory and model may help in understanding the experiences of students who have dropped or failed an online course. In this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 participants from a large Southeastern university in the United States. Based on the participants’ responses, the data was sorted and ranked according to the amount of transactional distance in their courses, as well as the categories of Kember’s model. Many of the participants who experienced low or high transactional distance have, also, expressed an issue with the goal commitment category of Kember’s model. Additionally, there were important differences in the student characteristics of those who dropped or failed an online course. Furthermore, suggestions for improving online courses were given by the participants. Some of these suggestions included more student-instructor interactions, the use of more technology tools in their online course, and for orientations to the online environment to be offered.

Modelo de interoperabilidade para utilização dos recursos dos ambientes virtuais de aprendizagem através de dispositivos móveis

The technological evolution has been making the Distance Education accessible for a greater number of citizens anytime and anywhere. The potential increase of the supply for mobile devices integrated to mobile learning environments allows that the information comes out of the physical environment, creating opportunities for students and teachers to create geographically distributed learning scenarios. However, many applications developed for these environments remain isolated from each other and do not become integrated sufficiently into the virtual learning environments (AVA). This dissertation presents an interoperability model between mobile devices and distinct AVA based on webservices. For the conception of this model, requirements engineering and software architecture techniques were used. With the goal of showing the model viability, a mobile application focused on surveys has been developed, and additionally, the main functionalities related to the interoperability were tested

Avaliação de usabilidade em materiais interativos de ensino a distância da UFRN-SEDIS

This study aims to assess the usability of Interactive Materials developed for the courses offered by UFRN SEDIS the modality of distance education (DE), using the techniques of focus group cooperative evaluation and assessment of satisfaction. The Interactive Materials are intended to serve as an avenue where the course content reaches the student in an educational, stimulating and self-instructive enough for the student to engage and find no difficulty in using it so. After the survey data in this context were selected four Interactive Materials ("Introduction to Applied Calculus", "Science, Technology and Society", "studies the Semi-Arid" and "Cultural Geography") that adopt the framework established by UFRN for SEDIS be evaluated for their usability. Initially, a preliminary test was conducted from cooperative assessment with a student interacting with the four learning objects in order to reveal and map the major failures of usability, supporting deeper questions later. The recordings of this preliminary test were analyzed by a focus group composed of two graphic designers and two multimedia designers, and developers responsible for these objects, which helped to analyze the gap between "what was designed" and "as was used "structuring and supplementing the roadmap for cooperative evaluation and assessment of subsequent satisfaction. The cooperative evaluation was applied individually to ten students of undergraduate UFRN that tested each of the four materials. At the end, every student completed a questionnaire assessing satisfaction form adapted Wanted (Questionnaire for User Interaction Satisfaction). The analysis of the data collected in this study revealed positive, negative and notes to be considered to guide the future development of Interactive Materials, in the context of UFRN SEDIS, feedback to the process of design and evaluation with user participation

Dificuldades de aprendizagem do conteúdo de soluções: proposta de ensino contextualizada

The study of solutions is considered very important to chemist’s education because most of the chemical reactions occur in aqueous medium, being also required to understand other subject such as chemical changes, electrochemical and chemical balance. Nevertheless, it is noticed that many students indicate learning difficulties related to the content of solutions, how to pass among the macro-submicroscopic knowledge levels, and how to solve quantitative problems that demanding the establishment of a stoichiometric ratios. This thesis defended considers the use of contextualized teaching strategies about some subject associated to the study of solution, can foster student learning through reflection and understanding of their own difficulties, besides to provide motivation and active participation. The target group is formed by students of the undergraduate distance education with major in chemistry education of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), and they were chosen because this education system is expanding and its learning difficulties publications number is reduced as well. Thus, the first methodological stage was to identify the student’s main learning difficulties associated to the study of solutions through literature sources. Next, using an adapted script of the Plano Nacional do Livro Didático para o Ensino Médio (PNLEM, Textbook National Plan for High School), the approach of the content of solutions printed in educational materials used by the target group was analyzed. Afterward, a teaching unit was planned in the last methodological stage and, finally, a new teaching unite was given with a sequence of contextualized activities such as video presentation, dialogued lecture, questionnaires application, exercises, and an experiment, where the target group’s main difficulties related to learning of solution were identified. The participants of the teaching unit activities had some learning difficulties in understand concepts of compound, ion, charge, entropy and solubility, as well as to identify the ion charge, interpret statements, decode tables, use the chemical language, perform mathematical calculations and use concentration units, similar results raised in the literature sources. In order to work on these difficulties, these students were encouraged to expose, question and test their ideas about the phenomenon under study, allowing learn from their mistakes and reflect on the organization strategy of scientific explanatory models they use. Therefore, activities and information about learning difficulties presented in this thesis need to be critical reflection object, because it can help both students in the process of acquiring knowledge about the content of solutions and professors in the planning of their lessons.

A inserção da educação a distância no ensino superior do Brasil: diretrizes e marcos regulatórios

This article aims to critically review the regulatory frameworks that guided the institutionalization of distance education (DE) course offerings in higher education institutions in Brazil, taking as a reference 50 (fifty) documents which were analyzed for the research titled Expansion of Higher Education pos-LDB 96. The need for systematization of DE, legitimated by this Act (LDB-96), proved to be part of the guidelines of international agencies as a strategy for expansion of higher education and that the first initiatives of the Brazilian government were associated with the use of technology in education. A contextualized analysis of regulatory frameworks showed, initially, the quantitative and massified explosion of DE, without the state having proper instruments for its effective regulation. From 2005, new regulatory acts and the creation of the Open University of Brazil seek to maintain this expansion without losing quality.

Proposta de jogo químico como estratégia didática no ensino a distância abordando o conteúdo de estereoquímica

The educational games can act as a complementary tool in the teaching and learning as play an important role in the interaction of the student with knowledge, and encourage interrelationship between students and motivate them by the pursuit of knowledge. This research is intended to analyze the evidence of the students of distance education applied to semesters 2011.2 and 2012.2 for the purpose of to catalog the mistakes presented by the students, the contents of stereochemistry that attended the Chemistry of Life discipline. From the presented mistekes, develop an educational game, "walking the stereochemistry", addressing that content. The choice of stereochemistry content was due to the low number of found work in the literature, and for being one of organic chemistry content that generates learning difficulties, as it requires a mental visualization and manipulation of molecular structures, besides require observation and comparison ability by the students. The game was applied of Life Chemistry discipline of Nova Cruz Polo in semester 2013.2, with intention to verify the viability and applicability this tool for the development of motivation ability by the pursuit of knowledge by the students, as well as complement the didactical materials of the DE. Then, It was made available on the course page an opinion questionnaire to the participants of the game, as a way of to investigate the opinion their about the proposed strategy. To diagnose the contributions of the game on student learning, it was taken a comparative analysis of stereochemistry issues contained in didactic tests applied in 2013.2 semester students participating and not participating of the polo of Nova Cruz and was also compared with the tests applied at the poles of Extremoz, Currais Novos, Lajes and Caico. So the game can be considered an important resource to complement the teaching materials of distance education, because awoke the motivation for the search of knowledge and contributes to the learning of stereochemistry content.

A educação a distância e a formação docente

This study was guided by the following question: Is it possible to prepare good teachers for Basic School in Distance Learning (DL) online? The over all objective of this study was to identify and systematize the essential knowledge and skills for the practice of teaching in basic education as well to investigate whe ther the Distance Learning courses which train and prepare future teachers include all the knowledge and skills necessary for teaching practice. This is a qualitative the oretical and bibliographic research that aims to analyze the current stageof the knowledge on this theme. We selected recent papers on this subject, in order to study what has been written by the authors as well to know which are their significant findings. Data were collected from dissertations, thesis and books published on the theme. Preliminarily, the theme of the presentation and contextualization has been made and the argument about the relevance of the study for education. In the second section, we present an overview of the Distance Education in Brazil: coargumentncepts, characteristics, emergence, evolution and regulation. The third section the working environmentin training teachers and students in on line education, targeting to be familiar to Learning Virtual Environments (LVE), analyzing how these new learning spaces are settled and how students and teachers be have in front of the new settings of teaching and learning using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). In the fourth section aimed to identify which are the essential knowledges and skills that the teacher must master in order to work competently as well to discover which are the personal and professional characteristics of a good teacher in the XXI century. The fifth section studied and analyzed the current situation with in Distance Education is carried out in Brazil. We identified the most significant contributions of Distance Learning to Brazilian Education System in order to contribute to advances in the debate on the effectiveness of teacher training courses in distance education mode online.Finally in the sixth section were made final remarks and presented the study results.

O PIBID - Programa Institucional de Bolsas de Iniciação à Docência e a crise das Licenciaturas: o caso de um Curso de Pedagogia a Distância

Tendo em vista a atual crise das licenciaturas, especialmente em termos da pouca atratividade que a formação para a docência vem apresentando em nosso contexto educacional e, considerando, ainda, as críticas sobre a fragilidade da formação inicial de professores ocorrer na modalidade a distância (no caso, o curso de Pedagogia), o PIBID - Programa Institucional de Bolsas de Iniciação à Docência surge como uma política de incentivo e valorização do magistério com o propósito de contribuir para uma formação mais sólida e articulada em termos da relação teoria-prática, especialmente pela proximidade que favorece aos alunos bolsistas, com o cotidiano escolar – este é o foco desta investigação que teve por objetivos: refletir sobre o histórico da formação docente em interface com a desvalorização do magistério que, consequentemente, levou à crise das licenciaturas e, a partir disso, analisar a proposição do PIBID como uma política pública para o enfrentamento desta crise; analisar as representações de bolsistas do PIBID, de um curso de Pedagogia a distância, sobre a experiência que estão tendo, e se ela contribui, no caso dos licenciandos, para o fortalecimento da escolha pela carreira docente; verificar as contribuições do programa para a formação dos licenciandos, dos supervisores (professores das escolas públicas parceiras) e do coordenador de área e se este oportuniza uma complementação na preparação para o exercício da docência. A pesquisa realizou uma revisão da literatura sobre a crise das licenciaturas e o contexto do aparecimento do PIBID, bem como sobre a formação de professores ocorrer na modalidade a distância, tendo como referencial teórico autores como Libâneo (1998), Gatti e Barreto (2009), Bahia e Duran (2011), Scheibe (2006), Sommer (2010), FCC (2009), Tardif (2005). Realizou, também, uma pesquisa de campo que teve como sujeitos sete bolsistas do PIBID de um curso de Pedagogia a distância (de uma instituição de ensino superior, particular, de São Paulo), sendo: quatro licenciandas, duas supervisoras e uma coordenadora de área do subprojeto. Foram aplicados dois instrumentos para a coleta de dados: um questionário para o delineamento do perfil dos sujeitos e a realização de entrevistas de aprofundamento. As reflexões realizadas a partir da revisão da literatura e das análises dos dados coletados junto aos sujeitos indicam que: em relação à proposição da formação inicial de professores a distância, esta denota maiores críticas, diferentemente da formação continuada de professores a distância, que apresenta uma maior aceitabilidade; em relação ao PIBID, os estudos vêm apontando a positividade das diversas experiências que vêm se desenvolvendo no território nacional e que denotam um trabalho articulado entre teoria e prática, bem como no resgate da identidade docente, com uma ênfase na valorização, inserção e permanência dos licenciandos nos seus cursos; as representações dos sujeitos investigados sobre a experiência que estão tendo com o PIBID apontam para: o reconhecimento de que o Programa garante, efetivamente, a reflexão e vivência entre a teoria e prática; a contribuição para a aquisição de maior segurança na relação com os alunos das escolas parceiras e também no desenvolvimento das atividades práticas; a certeza e/ou convicção de que realmente querem ser professoras.

La carpeta de aprendizaje y la evaluación entre iguales de los estudiantes. Resultados de una innovación docente en los estudios universitarios de las artes

Students reflect more on their learning in course subjects when they participate in managing their teaching–learning environment. As a form of guided participation, peer assessment serves the following purposes: (a) it improves the student’s understanding of previously established learning objectives; (b) it is a powerful metacognitive tool; (c) it transfers to the student part of the responsibility for assessing learning, which means deciding which learning activities are important and choosing the degree of effort a course subject will require; (d) it emphasizes the collective aspect of the nature of knowledge; and (e) the educational benefits derived from peer assessment clearly justify the efforts required to implement activities. This paper reports on the relative merits of a learning portfolio compiled during fine arts-related studies in which peer assessment played an important role. The researchers analyzed the student work load and the final marks students received for compulsory art subjects. They conclude that the use of a closed learning portfolio with a well-structured, sequential and analytical design can have a positive effect on student learning and that, although implementing peer assessment may be complex and students need to become familiar with it, its use is not only feasible but recommendable.

Emergence and Innovation in Digital Learning: Foundations and Applications

Educational systems worldwide are facing an enormous shift as a result of sociocultural, political, economic, and technological changes. The technologies and practices that have developed over the last decade have been heralded as opportunities to transform both online and traditional education systems. While proponents of these new ideas often postulate that they have the potential to address the educational problems facing both students and institutions and that they could provide an opportunity to rethink the ways that education is organized and enacted, there is little evidence of emerging technologies and practices in use in online education. Because researchers and practitioners interested in these possibilities often reside in various disciplines and academic departments the sharing and dissemination of their work across often rigid boundaries is a formidable task. Contributors to Emergence and Innovation in Digital Learning include individuals who are shaping the future of online learning with their innovative applications and investigations on the impact of issues such as openness, analytics, MOOCs, and social media. Building on work first published in Emerging Technologies in Distance Education, the contributors to this collection harness the dispersed knowledge in online education to provide a one-stop locale for work on emergent approaches in the field. Their conclusions will influence the adoption and success of these approaches to education and will enable researchers and practitioners to conceptualize, critique, and enhance their understanding of the foundations and applications of new technologies.

Democratização do acesso ao ensino superior: os cursos de graduação à distância na UFRN

This thesis pursuits to contextualize the theoretical debate between the implementation of public education policy of the Federal Government focused in a distance learning and legal foundations for its enforcement, in order to raise questions and comments on the topic in question. Its importance is back to provide scientific input and can offer to the academy, particularly in the UFRN, and elements of society to question and rethink the complex relationship between the socio-economic and geographic access to higher education. It consists of a descriptive study on the institutionalization of distance education in UFRN as a mechanism for expanding access to higher education, for both, the research seeks to understand if the distance undergraduate courses offered by the UAB system and implemented at UFRN, promote expanding access to higher education, as it is during implementation that the rules, routines and social processes are converted from intentions to action. The discussion of this study lasted between two opposing views of Implementation models: Top-down and Bottom-up. It is worth noting that the documents PNE, PDE and programs and UAB MEETING reflect positively in improving the educational level of the population of the country It is a qualitative study, using the means Bibliographic, Document and Field Study, where they were performed 04 (four) in 2010 interviews with the management framework SEDIS / UAB in UFRN. The data were analyzed and addressed through techniques: Document Analysis and Content Analysis. The results show that the process of implementation of distance education at UFRN is in progress. According to our results, the research objective is achieved, but there was a need to rethink the conditions of the infrastructure of poles, the structure of the academic calendar, the management of the SEDIS UFRN, regarding the expansion of existing vacancies and the supply of new courses by the need for a redesign as the Secretariat's ability to hold the offerings of undergraduate courses offered by the Federal Government to be implemented in the institution. It was also found that levels of evasion still presents a challenge to the teaching model. Given the context, we concluded that the greatest contribution of UAB and consequently UFRN by distance learning for undergraduate courses (Bachelor in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Geography and Biological Sciences, beyond the bachelor's degrees in Business and Public Administration ) is related to increasing the number of vacancies and accessibility of a population that was previously deprived of access to university

Redes de conversação como possibilidade de formação do professor tutor virtual na mediação pedagógica da educação profissional a distância

A educação a distância apoiada pelos meios de comunicação digital ampliou as possibilidades de interação, flexibilizando o processo de mediação pedagógica no tempo e no espaço. Nessa perspectiva, a educação profissional democratizou seu acesso, na qual os conhecimentos de nível técnico são customizados em um Ambiente Virtual de Aprendizagem (AVA) para serem mediados a distância. Esta tese, apresentada na forma de artigos, problematiza o processo de mediação pedagógica realizado pelo professor tutor virtual na Rede e-Tec Brasil do Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia Sul-rio-grandense (IFSul) Campus Visconde da Graça (CAVG). Nesse modelo de ensino, o professor tutor virtual é contratado para atuar, pelo período de dois anos, em todas as disciplinas curriculares de um curso técnico. Se, por um lado, isso permite-lhe conhecer a realidade de seus alunos; por outro, exige-lhe um esforço pedagógico de apropriação e mediação dos conteúdos específicos nas diversas disciplinas que integram os currículos de cada curso. A pesquisa buscou conhecer como o professor tutor virtual apropria-se dos conhecimentos específicos nos cursos técnicos para mediá-los pedagogicamente com os alunos. Apresentamos, como hipótese explicativa neste estudo, que é na convivência com o professor pesquisador que o professor tutor virtual encontra a possibilidade de se apropriar dos conhecimentos curriculares para poder mediá-los pedagogicamente com os alunos. Para sustentar teoricamente nossas proposições na experiência vivida, estabelecemos uma rede de conversação com os autores Humberto Maturana, Pierre Lévy, Lee Shulman e Maurice Tardif, por meio dos conceitos: cultura em redes de conversação; inteligência coletiva; conhecimento pedagógico do conteúdo; e formação profissional docente. Como procedimento metodológico, encontramos na técnica do Discurso do Sujeito Coletivo (DSC), de Lefèvre e Lefèvre, uma estratégia de abordagem qualitativa para analisar as recorrências encontradas nos discursos dos professores tutores virtuais. O estudo aponta que uma rede de conversação recursiva entre o professor pesquisador e o professor tutor virtual possibilita a apropriação de conhecimentos técnicos e específicos necessários ao processo de mediação pedagógica com os estudantes. Essa convivência, no caminho da constituição de um coletivo inteligente, favorece o trabalho colaborativo no ambiente da tutoria, contribuindo para profissionalizar o processo de mediação pedagógica na educação profissional a distância do IFSul CAVG. Supported by digital media, distance learning has increased the possibilities of interaction, easing the process of pedagogical mediation in time and space. From this perspective, the access to professional education has been democratized: technical knowledge is customized in a Learning Managing System and later delivered by means of mediated distance education courses. Structured in a sequence of articles, this dissertation addresses the problem of the pedagogical mediation process performed by on-line tutor teachers at Rede e-Tec Brasil of the Instituto Federal Sul- rio-grandense (IF-Sul), Campus Visconde da Graça (CAVG). This model of education establishes that on-line tutor teachers are hired to work with all the curriculum courses of a technical program for two years. If, on the hand, it allows these teachers to know the reality of their students well, on the other hand it demands them a pedagogical effort of appropriation and mediation of the specific contents guiding the various courses that comprise the curriculum of each program. This research aimed to find out how on-line tutor teachers appropriate expertise from technical programs to mediate it with their students in a pedagogical way. The explanatory hypothesis given is that by working together and sharing experience with the teacher/researcher, on-line tutor teachers will be able to appropriate of curricular knowledge and pedagogically mediate it with their students afterwards. To support our theoretical propositions, a network of conversation was established with authors like Humberto Maturana, Pierre Lévy, Lee Shulman, and Maurice Tardif through the concepts of culture in networks of conversation, collective intelligence, pedagogical content knowledge, and teacher training. As a methodological procedure, the technique of the Collective Subject Discourse (CSD), by Lefèvre and Lefèvre, was found to offer a strategy of qualitative approach to analyze the recurrences seen in the speech of on-line tutor teachers. The study shows that a recursive network of conversation between the teacher/researcher and the on-line tutor teacher enables the appropriation of specific and technical knowledge required for the process of pedagogical mediation with students. The experience of sharing a consensual professional relationship, in which one respects and accepts the other as a way of establishing a collective intelligence, encourages collaborative work in the tutoring environment, helping professionalize the process of pedagogical mediation in distance professional education at IFSul CAVG.

Escolha profissional e o perfil dos acadêmicos de administração na modalidade a distância da FURG: um estudo comparativo

A atividade profissional é fundamental para a constituição do sujeito e reprodução da sociedade. Por outro lado, o processo de ensino-aprendizagem, na modalidade a distância, apresenta novos desafios e mudanças substanciais na maneira de se produzir conhecimento. Dessa forma, no presente estudo, analisaram-se dados socioeconômicos dos acadêmicos do curso de administração a distância da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande, com o intuito de traçar seu perfil, fazendo uma análise comparativa com os alunos da modalidade presencial. Trata-se de um estudo quantitativo, no qual se utilizou o tratamento estatístico na análise dos dados, obtidos de questionário e fontes secundárias. Os resultados demonstram que os acadêmicos da modalidade a distância possuem uma média de idade superior à dos alunos do presencial, sendo 63% são responsáveis pelo próprio sustento. Além disso, apenas 11% são oriundos de escolas particulares, ao passo que 25%, no presencial, provêm dessas instituições. Mais de 50%, por sua vez, são filhos de pais com grau de instrução inferior ao ensino fundamental e 31% afirmaram que o fizeram basicamente por ser um curso virtual, indicando que a educação à distância, além de oferecer a possibilidade de qualificação profissional às mais distantes regiões do país, beneficia um público que está entre as camadas mais necessitadas da população.