Abstract:

The Associação Nacional de Equoterapia (National Association of Equine Therapy) and the Universidade de Brasília (University of Brasilia), planned an specialization course in Equine therapy with the method of e-learning. It is stated that equine therapy is the horseback riding techniques and equine activities, having as a goal either the rehabilitation or the learning of people with disabilities. Goals of the course: to graduate specialists that can contribute for the scientific production and the improvement in therapeutic care, rehabilitation and psycho pedagogical as accomplished by the multidisciplinary team that acts on equine therapy, hoping for the consolidation and diffusion of the adaptation method to the diversity of people with disabilities. Methods and results: the course is organized with three main aspects: (1) communication strategies for the trainee to have access and assimilation to the content; (2) activities that stimulate the practice of theory, the self-evaluation and learning fixation; (3) Formal procedures of learning evaluation. The process of production of didactic material consists in: Texts and articles, learning videos, internet videos, questionnaires, activities and forums for debate and construction of collective learning, with the intent of creating opportunities for more field intervention by the trainee. The course started in 7/29/2016 and is expect to finish on 4/03/2018, during the presentation of articles for the conclusion of the course. Four disciplines have already been offered: State of the art and knowledge production in Equine therapy, psychomotricity applied to Equine therapy, applied kinesiology, ethology and hippology, also a course denominated: how to study in the e-learning method. At the end, test for evaluations were applied with up to 15 items that were intended to measure the perceptions of the trainees about the quality of the course. That records resulting from surveys seem to indicate satisfaction with the course and the didact material produced by the teachers, participation in discussion forums, assisted by the administrative and technological staff of the course, also the appearance and availability of the virtual and learning environment. There is an incidence of records that point out the difficulty of navigating and locating information in the virtual learning environment of the course, records that seem to be characteristics of the target audience attended, with about 47% who had never taken an online course in the e-learning method.

Keywords:

Equine therapy; e-learning, motor skills, SERVQUAL scale, SERVPERF scale.