Camila Furlan da Costa

Articulações em rede e acontecimentos no território: subsídios teóricos para a formação de políticas públicas para o desenvolvimento

In this essay we use constructs, concepts and categories from geography in order to search for elements that could help in the formation of public policies oriented for development. The reasons that lead us to attempt such an approximation are related to the contemporary geopolitical context and the simplification in the use of the concept of territory, for example, as a simple indicator of a space, over which one can apply methodologies, much of the time inspired by exogenous models of public policy. We conclude that the approximation to the concept of territory implies taking for granted the relational character of the articulations that occur in socio-political spaces built by social and governmental actors. Such a need becomes more relevant as one can observe the governmental initiatives that have been implemented at the federal level, which attempt to recuperate the ability to plan and promote development from the formation and articulation of national, regional and local public policies.

Capitalismo acadêmico e reformas neoliberais no ensino superior brasileiro

This article aims to understand the political economy of higher education based on the contextualization and the description of the main government programs developed throughout the Lula and Dilma governments. The academic capitalism category will be explored for an initial analysis of neoliberal reforms in Brazilian higher education. The category seeks to identify the multiple forms and meanings through which market and pro-market behaviors have been adopted by the US universities to create processes of integration to the new economy in search of alternative funding sources. When Brazilian government programs are approached to the perspective of academic capitalism, we identify that the changes imposed by the amendments in legislation contribute to the restructuring of academic practices and create conditions for implementation of the academic capitalist regime. However, the functional-systemic-structural bias of the category and the need to mediate with the “concrete” imposes limits for the understanding of higher education reforms in the country. Thus, in order to reflect on the implications of neoliberal logic for reforms in dependent countries such as Brazil, it is necessary to resume the thinking of the Brazilian sociologist Florestan Fernandes and submit the dependent pattern category on higher education formulated by him in the 1970s to contemporary historical-concrete mediations to understand how ongoing reforms are related to that pattern.

IMPLEMENTAÇÃO DE MUDANÇAS EM CURSO DE GRADUAÇÃO A DISTÂNCIA DA UFRGS E SUA AVALIAÇÃO PELOS ALUNOS

O presente texto constitui um relato analitico da implementacao do curso de graduacao em Administracao na modalidade a distância, desenvolvido no periodo de 2006 ate 2010, como projeto-piloto e parceria entre o Ministerio da Educacao (MEC), o Banco do Brasil (BB) e a Escola de Administracao (EA) da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). O curso iniciou com cerca de 600 alunos – advindos da denominada demanda interna (DI), ou seja, funcionarios do BB, e da demanda social (DS), publico em geral – e terminou com, aproximadamente, 350 alunos. Para seu desenvolvimento, utilizou a Plataforma NAVi como Ambiente Virtual de Aprendizagem. Na gestao do curso, com o passar do tempo, foram feitas mudancas na sua estrutura administrativa e pedagogica, com a introducao de novos papeis, decorrentes de adaptacoes as necessidades dos alunos e em prol de uma maior eficacia do processo de ensino e aprendizagem. O texto analisa como estas mudancas afetaram positivamente os indices de satisfacao dos alunos do curso de graduacao em Administracao da EA/UFRGS, conforme pesquisas de avaliacao das disciplinas cursadas.

Aprendizagem organizacional a partir das práticas de educação a distância da Escola de Administração/UFRGS

Studies on Learning and Distance Education are found in various forms of publication. However, the articulation between these areas is still an open field for debates. To enhance this discussion, the purpose of this study is to analysis the way that has been occurred the organizational learning in the EA/UFRGS, after the experiences of the courses in distance in the period of 2005 to 2010. We used a qualitative case study method to analyze these four on-line courses at UFRGS. Data were obtained through participant observation and documentation and analyzed through the use of qualitative interpretive analysis technique. Information was collected through participant observation and was analyzed thru a qualitative interpretative technique. Findings showed that a series of practices and roles were set and changed much more as a result of trial and error process than as a result of coordinated and planned actions done by the on-line staff group. We inferred that UFRGS online course management practices that were adopted resulted in organizational learning. However, an integrated discussion and routine evaluation between the managers of the four analyzed courses could bring more benefits to the Business School, reducing the administrative and teaching subjectivity.