The challenges of Digital Education in Higher Education were the subject of debate last Tuesday (30), at Unicamp. Promoted by the Educational Technologies Management Group (GGTE), the event aimed to discuss digital education policy at Unicamp. “This policy is under construction. It is digital strategic planning for the next five years”, he stated Marco Antonio Garcia de Carvalho, GGTE coordinator.
The University's digital policy is being developed by a working group (GT) created about a year ago, made up of the undergraduate deans (PRG), postgraduate (PRPG) and extension and culture (Proec). “We have several initiatives at the university, which were built over time and played an important role. We have a tradition of distance learning tools, which are part of students' daily experience. The extension has completely online courses and a slightly more defined policy, but not a general policy for the University. We feel the need to have a clear policy that guides our path over the next five years. The GT has the objective of creating a policy that can guide our actions”, explained Fernando Hashimoto, vice-rector of Extension and Culture, who chairs the working group.
According to Carvalho, the GT has been outlining a path to using hybrid teaching: combining the best of information and communication technology with traditional teaching. According to him, the use of technological resources is being considered by the group in terms of motivating students, from a generation that uses technological devices to communicate and learn. “We need to know how to use this in our daily classroom lives, which involves a cultural transformation of both students and teachers”, he pointed out.
The seminar marked the final stage of the GT's work, which will present its contribution to the Central administration and the community at the University Council (Consu).
The event also featured a lecture by the director of Gartner Research, Glenda Morgan, specialist in technology strategies in higher education. The researcher pointed out some of the main international trends in the debate on the use of technologies in higher education, presenting questions and successful experiences. For her, the main risk is losing sight of the student. “Sometimes we fall in love with technology and lose sight of the fact that learning is difficult and is actually structured by people”, he reflected.
Morgan highlighted successful experiences and different uses of technology in higher education institutions, such as (adaptive learning), and on University of Central Florida; facilitating access to information at Georgia Tech; or using data to understand student struggles at Georgia State University. For her, expanding access is a prominent element in the debate on distance learning, but the idea of reducing costs should be viewed with caution.
