S.P. Marinho, W. Lobato, A.M.S. Marinho, D. Serra, D. Abdala, G.V. Mendes, J.F. Schulman, and P.M.C. Araújo (Brazil)
Distance education – faculty education - in-service teacher education – virtual classroom – peer-to-peer education
Distance education, based on virtual environments, is challenging Brazilian universities and colleges. Faculty must be trained for a new pedagogy required for delivering distance education. Faculty must be educated to teach in the online classrooms. An alternative for that training, that could reduce costs and time, should be on peer-to-peer education, developed in multidisciplinary working teams. To investigate that possibility, we developed a special project, adopting a research action. In the project, teachers worked on a cooperative and multidisciplinary basis to solve a specific problem: to design and to deliver a online course. They had no classes, no training for that. All the knowledge was constructed on a group task. The project assessment allowed us to identify some factors that make easy and other that make difficult the action of self-organized teams when building the necessary competency and skills to teach in virtual learning environments, the new classroom.
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