Web Conferencing: What a Group of Distance Learning Students Say

Abstract

The number of students entering Distance Higher Education has been increasing in recent years. Distance education (DE) has been recognized as a viable and significant alternative for professional education in Brazil. With its growth, new information and communication technologies were incorporated. One of these technologies is web conferencing, a synchronous tool for multimodal and multimedia communication. The objective of this research was to analyze the profile of students who use web conferencing and to verify their perceptions about the tool. The methodology used in this work consisted of collecting data from a questionnaire aimed at students of a course in Biological Sciences at the CEDERJ consortium. In all, 207 students responded to this research tool on-line, using Google Forms. The results indicated that students regularly access the study platform and do so from their homes. Web conferencing have enabled pedagogical mediation for students who live far from their classroom support centers. The students gave positive evaluations to the web conferencing, indicating high levels of understanding and interest in the contents taught. They positively evaluated the resources used by mediators in these spaces, such as figures and language, promoting interactivity among users. Connection has not proved to be a limiting factor for most students. Analyzed together, the evaluations indicate that web conferencing represent a fundamental resource for promoting the teaching and learning process in distance education and should be progressively used in other disciplines or courses.

Keywords: University education. Web conferencing. Video tutorial.