Organização e gestão da educação a distância em Moçambique: uma análise a partir do perfil dos alunos

Abstract

This work analyzed the management and organization of distance education units from student profiles of educational institutions in Mozambique. The relevance of this work was found to be appropriate since, in most public universities, not only do managers and teachers lack the culture of inventorying and prizing student information as a means of supporting the organization and management processes of distance learning units, but they also persist in privileging leadership and coordination practices that do not foster greater involvement of these players in such process. In methodological terms, it involved an applied, exploratory research focused on a qualitative approach. The data were collected through the application of a semi-structured interview to seven course coordinators and a structured questionnaire to 60 teachers and 1013 students who teach and study, respectively, in this type of education. For the purpose of data analysis and treatment, it was decided to adopt the strategy of content analysis. The results reveal that, among the students who attend the distance learning courses, many of them have Internet access (50% at home and 40% at the company where they work, as opposed to the resource centers - 10%). It was also observed that, in order to reach the resource center, 55% of them take between three and four hours; 35%, less than three hours; and 10%, almost a day. In this sense, although teachers and course coordinators acknowledge it as relevant, the profile of the distance learning student is not used in the sense of enhancing pedagogical and management practices, since 49 teachers stated that the information is not made available to the professors. Moreover, the strategies used for prizing them are inappropriate for the dynamics of the modality. One of the explanations for this situation is due to the fact that coordinators and teachers lack knowledge of the management philosophies of the modality; there is also poor coordination among them and the inability of institutions to adopt coherent strategies to enhance the distance learning system as a whole. The research data also demonstrate that the services of the coordinator are always requested by the professors (32), as opposed to the services of the tutors (09) and of the teachers of the Center (03). Given this context, it is suggested that, at the level of institutions, strategies for institutional improvement should be developed that are geared to prizing the student profile by coordinators and teachers. It is equally suggested that management platforms be created improving coordination and leadership processes adjustable to the management processes of this type of education, since, from the research data, it was also possible to understand the poor insertion of distance education within the extension projects of the studied institutions.