UM OLHAR ENGENHEIRO SOBRE O PLANEJAMENTO E A GESTÃO DE CURSOS À DISTÂNCIA

Abstract

Engineering distance education (as well as alldistance professional and technological education) carriesspecific management challenges, bigger then the nonscientific and technological areas courses, in order toachieve higher quality. To learn complex content,professional and psychomotor skills, all of them featuringthese areas, is a very important issue. So, distance coursesfor them are supposed to integrate both face-to-face classes,to permit practical lessons, and very well plannedtechnological devices (simulators, software control, etc.),whenever it will be necessary to improve technologicalcompetence and psychomotor diagnosis. In theese cases,face-to-face meetings demand previously planned logistics,once high costs investments in equipment and laboratoriesare required, related the number of presence poles ordistance interaction technology. One of possible solutions isto provide moving units and instructors, to ride around thepoles, on previously schedules, to guide practical classes,processes and experiments, performed in laboratories andteaching kits.

Index Terms - educational technologies, engineering education, distance-learning, teaching-learning issues.