STATISTICAL METHOD TO EVALUATE DISTANCE EDUCATION COURSES

Abstract

Distance Education (EAD) courses as a way of acquiring knowledge, has been expanding in recent years in the several educational levels, both in formal and informal education. In Brazil, this expansion was visible mainly after the distance educations regulations made by the Ministry of Education (MEC) for the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. With this growth, there is concern about the form and quality in which the courses are being offered. Finally, in 2007 the Quality Reference in Distance Higher Education was published by the Ministry of Education (MEC) [7]. When talking about quality, one must think to how construct evaluation instruments. In the other hand, especially within the educational context, evaluation is always a complex process, considering that the main concern is what to evaluate and why to evaluate. In this work, it was defined that the objective is to evaluate a Specialization course in the distance modality based on the students' point of view. Structured questionnaires were applied, using statistical sampling techniques so that students could give their opinion about the course they were receiving. In this questionnaire, questions with answer alternatives (closed questions) and an open question were considered. In this situation, the closed questions were analyzed quantitatively, using statistical techniques, such as cluster analysis. For the Special Education Specialization course in the Inclusive Education Perspective of the Teacher Training of Sao Paulo network Program (REDEFOR), the degree of satisfaction in relation to the Virtual Learning Environment and the performance of the onsite Tutors were the smallest in the first subjects. One of the main criticisms of the students was related to the number of activities that they performed and the deadline for their delivery, which was consistent with the quantitative analysis, considering that within dimension II -Didactic Material, issues with lower degree of satisfaction, were those related to the quantity of materials worked and the delivery times. The analyzes also showed that the course was of high satisfaction (more than 90%) and some text in the questionnaires indicate the strengths and some deficiencies that can be corrected.