Abstract:

Introduction:
New information and communication technologies have teamed up with teaching-learning to break paradigms of a traditional education, focused only on the figure of the teacher in synchronous processes. New times bring devices and technological systems that empower education. Now, the flexibility of time, space and scope are variables that are present in technological education and, on this, the Moodle Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) fits perfectly into this new approach.

Objective:
To analyze the practices of teachers and students in a subject of higher education in health in the context of usability of collaborative tools of the MOODLE Virtual Learning Environment (version 2.7), in order to corroborate with subsidies in content offering distance in health mediated by ICTs.

Method:
This is a descriptive and quantitative methodological cross-sectional study. In cross-sectional studies the phenomena are analyzed during a period of data collection, being suitable for describing a situation to infer an answer to the analyzed problem.

Result:
Teacher’s and student’s information was found on: the demographic profile; perceptions of characteristics, competence and role of mentoring; teaching strategies arising from synchronous and asynchronous tools; and skills of research groups for the use of the MOODLE VLE tools focused on the usability of the platform.

Conclusion:
The usability according to ISO / IEC 9241-11 measures three variables: "Effectiveness" (allows the user to achieve the initial objectives of interaction); "Efficiency" (amount of efforts and resources to reach a certain goal); and "Satisfaction" (comfort level that the user feels when using the interface). In this study it was concluded that the students are "satisfied with the effectiveness of virtual platform" and teachers considered that the platform is "effective and efficient" to achieve their goals.

Keywords:

Education, Distance, MOODLE, Teaching, Learning, Health Education.