INTRODUCING SCIENCE BY DISTANCE EDUCATION TO UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

• Autor(a) principal: Avila Jr., P.
• Data de Publicação: 2007
• Outros Autores: Azevedo, A.M.P., Torres, B.B.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista de Ensino de Bioquímica
• Texto Completo: http://bioquimica.org.br/revista/ojs/index.php/REB/article/view/89
• topic: distance education ; undergraduate students

Exponential growing of scientific and technological knowledge of nowadayssociety demands new abilities and competences of theirs citizens. In the otherhand, the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)and the low cost of equipments provide a new teaching strategy, namely distanceeducation, through intranet or internet. The familiarity with of scientific methodstimulates autonomy in obtaining information, critical thinking and logical analysisof data. These are useful abilities for science students as well as for commoncitizens. Aiming the development of such abilities a distance course wasdeveloped in 45 hours, using mainly forum and chat in the Claroline platform withtechnical support of the Centro Nacional de Supercomputação da UFRGS. All thestudents attending the course were from Fundação Faculdade Federal deCiências Médicas de Porto Alegre. In this course the following topics wereexplored: (1) scientific knowledge x common sense, (2) different conceptions ofscience, (3) scientific method, (4) different categories of science publications, (5)principles of Logic, (6) deduction x induction (7) paper analysis simulation.Scientific project writing was taught/learned through the following items: (1) choiceof a problem, (2) bibliography revision, (3) agencies for funding, (4) projectpresentation by videoconference and (5) analysis of results.The course was evaluated by Likert-type questionnaire and the results fromstudents and teachers indicate a very successful outcome.