Abstract:

The development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has boosted the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as a transforming strategy for knowledge construction in various fields. These courses have been adhered by many renowned institutions throughout the world. In Brazil, the SAITE Group along with the Open University of Brazilian National Health System (UNA-SUS) and its partner, the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA), have totalized more than 200 thousand registrations in MOOCs in the 2016-2017 biennium. In this process, recognizing that people learn in different manners, and considering the pronounced outreach of MOOCs, a great challenge is to consider ICTs in the pedagogical practice as structuring elements of new learning practices and not only as mere aid tools. This paper presents the experience of the group in the application of the peer evaluation activity as an educational strategy in a massive self-instructional course in distance learning modality. The course in analysis is the “Women’s health in Primary Care: clinical protocol for nursing”, that totalizes 45 hours and 3 modules. In order to approach meaningful learning and provide shared learning processes, we developed a model of peer evaluation activity. The evaluation activities were structured in the following categories: interventions in the health team, which aims to report the experience in the restructuring of work processes in Primary Care (PC); interventions in community, which aims to report the experience of planning actions in partnership with community; and the case report, which aims to report cases that demonstrate the problem-solving characteristic of the health assistance in PC. The activity consisted of two steps: each student should send their activities and next evaluate the activity sent by a colleague. To perform the evaluation, the students had at their disposal an evaluation script based on five-level Likert scale, which provided them with criteria and parameters to be evaluated. In the Virtual Learning Environment (LE), a friendly interface was developed using the workshop Moodle module. A number of 6.666 students have registered in the course. From this number, 20% performed the first step of the peer evaluation activity. From those who sent the first step, 83% evaluated a colleague’s activity (second step). From the students that performed both steps of the activity, 69% performed the course’s final activity, reaching certification. The percentage of the students that completed the whole course compared to the total number of students registered was of 11,3%. In each educational module, the students were given the option to evaluate the course. From those who completed the course, 5% answered the evaluation survey, 82% classified the peer evaluation activity with concept “good” or “very good”. The average rate of conclusion of MOOCs in the world is between 10% and 15% (Cairo, 2017) and in the digital era, we every day more reach competences from the construction of connections with other people and experiences. Therefore, it is suggested here that the participation rates in the peer evaluation activity in the course abovementioned might be a predictor of a motivational factor in the learning process, an important methodological tool to consider the diversity of people who followed the course, as well as a fundamental element to foster the inter-learning.

Keywords:

Innovation, Technology, Education, Health.