As an institution locus da edição do ESUD|CIESUD (2023), a Agência de Educação Digital e a Distância (Agead) possui duas secretarias: Secretaria de Tecnologias e Materiais Digitais (Setec) e Secretaria de Inovação Pedagógica Digital (Seped). A Agead/UFMS, alinhada ao projeto de gestão institucional, tem trabalhado na perspectiva de transformação digital e cultural em todas as frentes de atuação da universidade, mobilizando conhecimentos e habilidades do mundo digital para a formação de profissionais em todas as áreas.

Distance education at UFMS is completing 23 years of existence, with 15 years of partnership with UAB, fulfilling the purpose of the policy of internalizing Public Higher Education, with priority given to offering initial and continuing teacher training courses for the Basic education. Throughout this history, the unique chance to study at a federal public institution of higher education mobilized and still mobilizes many people not only in the municipalities of the poles, but also in the surroundings of these municipalities. UFMS, which was already a multi-campus university, reached the most distant places in the State of MS, bringing much more than an academic education, but also hope, achievements and life changing, creating a virtual collaboration network and strengthening relationships and local connections.

In this sense, and based on the experience built from the implementation of the UFMS Digital Program, whose actions focused on the elaboration of an innovative pedagogical and methodological design, on the implementation of digital technologies and on the strategy of expanding offers, Agead/UFMS proposes to foment a new debate, not yet deepened in previous editions of the event, to bring the emergence and need for greater protagonism of public institutions of higher education in distance education offers in Brazil.

This debate goes through the concepts of management, governance and quality, and which are not restricted only to the sectors that manage distance learning offers, but imply a mobilization of the institution as a whole for the knowledge and implementation of governance practices, which can contribute to improvements in distance education management actions and activities.

In the context of Distance Education, governance refers to the strategic set of management practices, policies and processes used to manage projects, resources, people, physical and virtual spaces, technologies and methodologies that involve distance learning offers.

Governance implies the definition of objectives and goals, which guide decision-making, process management, execution of actions and monitoring of the performance of all the actors involved, in addition to accountability to society for the public investment that is made for the development of training proposals.

Management and governance in EaD are fundamental to guarantee the quality of the courses and the efficiency in the execution of public resources. In addition, knowledge of these strategies can provide greater transparency, equity and responsibility in the relationship between the institution and its students, professors, tutors and others involved in the process, contributing to the alignment of institutional objectives with the training needs of students.

Through management and governance, it is possible to enable an institutional construction of processes that ensure the quality of the courses, including the definition of quality standards and benchmarks, the implementation of constant evaluation strategies of the pedagogical, technological and management processes, as well as evaluation of students' learning outcomes, with a view to preventing dropout.

From this perspective, the ESUD | CIESUD 2023 has the following general objective :

• Promote spaces for dialogue, cooperation, scientific dissemination and exchange of experiences on distance education in Brazil, focusing on public policies, management, governance and quality.

And as specific objectives :

• Provide discussions and exchange of experiences between institutions, managers, researchers and professors on public policies, management, governance and quality of distance education in Brazil;
• Create spaces for scientific dissemination through the presentation of academic works related to the general theme of the event and to distance education and digital technologies in general;
• Contribute to the strengthening and expansion of distance education offers in public institutions of higher education in Brazil.

 

Let's go together towards building a quality Public Distance Education, which can increasingly expand physical boundaries and overcome barriers to accessing knowledge.

The ESUD | CIESUD 2023 is organized by the Associação Universidade em Rede (Unirede) in partnership with the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS) , through the Digital and Distance Education Agency (Agead).