UnisulVirtual – Unisul’s distance education campus

The UnisulVirtual campus is the unit specializing in distance education at the University of Southern Santa Catarina – UNISUL. UNISUL is a municipal education foundation created by the municipality of the city of Tubarão in 1964, and is part of the education system of the State of Santa Catarina, in the southern region of Brazil.

The methodology adopted and the form of organization of distance education on the UnisulVirtual campus are in line with the concept of Virtual University where the pedagogic use of the technological digital communication resources allow the students to have permanent contact with their tutors, with their class colleagues, with the institutional administrative departments and remote access to the content and learning activities. The students are situated throughout the whole of the Brazilian territory and in other countries.

1. History of distance education at Unisul
2. The methodology of the UnisulVirtual campus
3. Unisul international Cooperation in distance education

History of distance education at UNISUL

Since the year 1999, Unisul has carried out applied research in the field of distance education. The first distance education programs were offered in 2001 with progressive integration between face-to-face education and distance education, constituting a model of university with bimodal and flexible teaching, where the students in the face-to-face can enroll for courses which are offered in the distance mode, and the students on distance programs are obliged to take part in face-to-face evaluation activities at the end of the period of each learning module. In September 2008, Unisul had a total of around 41,000 students enrolled who were distributed between face-to-face and distance education as follows:

One fundamental difference between the profile of the students on the face-to-face programs and the students on the distance programs is the age range. Whereas face-to-face students are mostly young and have recently finished high school and still live with their parents, in distance education, the students are adults and have jobs and are financially independent. The average age in face-to-face programs is of 21.7 years, and the average age of the distance students is 34.8 years.

The UnisulVirtual Campus offers the most underUndergraduate distance programs in Brazil. There are underUndergraduate programs for nineteen careers, and seven Undergraduate distance programs. The students are from all states of the federation, including students on Brazilian Army missions in Haiti, in Poland, in Germany and South Africa.

The methodology of the UnisulVirtual campus

UnisulVirtual employs a teaching methodology which gives priority to the use of digital technologies for permanent contact between the distance students and their university teachers, allowing the students to study and clear up their doubts from any computer which is connected to the Internet. UnisulVirtual created the Virtual Learning Space tool as the main resource for pedagogical mediation between teachers and students. The students also receive printed teaching material, CD-ROMs and DVDs to do their reading and simulation activities which are compulsory to the programs. 

During the period of offering the courses, students have daily attendance from the teachers and technicians to clear up doubts, to hand in assignments, receive guidance on study and correction of activities performed. The tests requiring their presence are held in military organizations of the Army, Air Force, and the Navy and at partner universities throughout Brazil.  The UnisulVirtual students can choose the city where they will sit for the examination, and this allows the cost reductions on transport and adds flexibility and mobility to the model. 

The UnisulVirtual model has the following characteristics:

1. Flexibility: The student can organize their own pace of study;
2. Mobility: The student can move examination sites without interrupting the courses;
3. Requirement: Connection to the Internet;
4. Dedication: Minimum period of 12 to 16 hours of study per week;
5. Text books: Sent by mail, one per course;
6. On-line tutorial: Only with teachers from the regular Unisul staff;
7. Technical support: Administrative attendance from 7.30 a.m. to 10.30 p.m.;
8. Face-to-face examinations: At the end of each two-month cycle, always on Saturdays;
9. Virtual Learning Space: Handing in learning activities and return of corrections by teachers via VLS, available 24 x 7;
10. Coverage: Throughout the national territory and in other countries.

The combination of this flexible distance education model at UnisulVirtual and the constant attendance of students by teachers from Unisul itself have led to Unisul being hired by some of the largest and most demanding Brazilian organizations. The principal characteristic of UnisulVirtual is that if offers students, wherever they may be, the same quality of teaching and attendance as if they were enrolled on a conventional face-to-face program at Unisul. The following table shows the major UnisulVirtual partnerships.

Within Unisul, UnisulVirtual also does the planning for the setting up and implementation of new distance programs; coordinates the training of teachers and technicians in pedagogic methodologies in distance education; develops web technologies for distance education; and, in partnership with conventional education campuses of the university, promotes the offering of distance courses so that the face-to-face students can do up to 20% of their contact hours enrolled using the distance education resources, with flexible education.

Unisul international Cooperation in distance education

The UnisulVirtual campus maintains international cooperation programs with the European Community through the Ca’Foscari University in Venice, taking part in the ALFA III Program. In a partnership with the Ca’Foscari University, Unisul offers the specialization program in Education Sciences lasting one year with 360 contact hours. The content and activities were developed in partnership with a network of universities, led in Europe by Ca’Foscari, and in Latin-America by the UnisulVirtual campus. The program is offered simultaneously in Portugal, Italy, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, in the Italian, Spanish and Portuguese languages. The certificate obtained by the students is valid in Brazil and in the European Community.

Another international cooperation of note is the participation of UnisulVirtual campus in the OpenLearn project of the Open University in the United Kingdom. UnisulVirtual is an active collaborator and is seen as a successful example in the OpenLearn project, which consists of a repository of open educational resources available on the Internet. It offers materials at undergraduate, Master’s and doctoral levels as well as learning socialization tools for anyone interested in learning, with free access. Within this web site, UnisulVirtual has a collaborations area, where it has made available translations of Open University courses into Portuguese and has published its own courses both in Portuguese and English as a means of feeding this open content repository.

Additionally, other collaborations with the Open University are currently under discussion, such as an exchange program of academic researchers with the granting of mutual fellowships, projects in international security and also in Portuguese language and Brazilian culture.

On the American continent, the UnisulVirtual campus has a cooperation with the OAS – the Organization of American States, and offers the program in Electronic Government, exclusively in the Portuguese language, to prepare public sector staff to use planning and budgetary execution tools focused on the criteria of transparency in public accounts.