For a new ethical horizon in the fight against inequality

1. Luciano Sathler Rosa Guimarães1
T
he way Higher Education is organized
in Brazil tends to reflect and reinforce
the deep inequalities that mark the
history and the present of the country.
Starting with the Brazil Colony,
including the times of the Proclamation of the
Republic, the New State, the Military Dictatorship
and until present days, a mode of production
based on the extractive oligopolies of abundant
natural resources and on export monocultures of
low productivity, was favored.
This economy based on primary products
and enterprises of low technological intensity
was sustained by the exploitation of slaves and
1
Bachelor's degree in Social communication – Qualification in
Advertising and Propaganda by PUC - MG. Master's degree in Business
Administration from the Methodist University of São Paulo and
doctorate in Administration by FEA / USP. Has a specialization in
University Management by the Interamerican University Organization
/CRUBandinMarketingStrategicManagementbyCEPEAD/UFMG.He
is currently Rector of the Methodist University Center Izabela Hendrix,
in Belo Horizonte (MG); National Director of Distance Education in
Methodist educational institutions; Director of the Brazilian Distance
Education Association - ABED; and professor at the Methodist
UniversityofSãoPaulo.Curatorofthesite:http://inovacaoeducacional.
com.br, addressing the themes: University Management - Distance
Education - Educational Innovation - Technology in Education and
Organizational Learning.
REFERENCE REFERENCE
29UEMAnet • PoloUm Magazine UEMAnet • PoloUm Magazine28
The distinctive character of our ethnic transfiguration is the
continuity, through the centuries, of crucial elements of the
archaic social order, of the dependence of the economy and
of the spurious character of culture. Today, we are on the eve
of even more comprehensive changes, because a more radical
technological revolution is emerging on the horizon. If we once
again allow ourselves to be consumers of their fruits, instead of
dominate their new technology, the threats to our survival and
to national sovereignty will be even more intense.
Darcy Ribeiro
immigrants, succeeded by the impoverishment of
the majority of the population and the continued
deterioration of labor relations.
Having the support of economy, cheap
labor and available in abundance, even with little
or no formal education, was what allowed all be
late, delayed, slow and poorly planned in Brazilian
education.
These factors, and many others, purposely
inhibited the development of a quality education
system for everyone, whose occasional exceptions
reinforce the need to review the whole. We remain
unable to transform reality for emancipation in a
national project that promotes the common good.
It is worth remembering that if until 1930
the main contingent of labor was born and
grown outside colonial and national territory,
today, in a clear and continuous alignment with
this historical fact, the de-socialization and the
depersonalization of the most impoverished ones,
added to the racism, to feed the mental model that
propitiates to convert people into merchandise
are factors of production at low cost. This helps
to compose an inhospitable and incompatible
environment for scientific development and
innovation.
The formation of more people who could
participate critically and autonomously for
inclusive, equitable and sustainable development
was something to be avoided by the elites who
plotted the main political movements. The elite of
Brazil, formed mainly in the University of Coimbra,
could be "illustrated, cultivated at times, but never
cultured", in the words of Anísio Teixeira.
In the 20th century, the New State, which
implemented the legal figure of the university
for the first time in the country, did so as "a
reaction to the liberalization and modernization
movements of the cultural spheres in Brazilian
society, according to the clever motto of let’s
make the revolution before the people do it".
In the 1960s and 1970s, economists who
populated the national scene and conducted public
policies during the Military Dictatorship claimed
that it was necessary, first, to grow the cake and
then distribute it. However, a historical series that
analyzes the concentration of income in the hands
of the richest 1% of Brazil's population, from 1927
to 2013, shows that the income accumulation
at the top of the pyramid promoted a widening
gap between the richest and the poorest, in this
period.
That is to say, it was not only due to the
accelerated growth of the economy, initiated
in 1968, and the not attended demand by
more qualified workers that caused the rise of
inequality. At the time, the so-called human capital
theory was used to point out the educational
level as the main isolated factor to explain the
increase in inequality. As Brazil grew at high rates,
the demand for professionals with more years of
formal education would have forced the income
of those who met those requirements. The data
show that this theory doesn’t hold.
Even in recent times, numbers calculated on
the basis of tax data show stability. That is, there
may have been redistribution of income to groups
at the base of the pyramid for a short period
without this altering the share of the richest 1%.
Because of this, in the inequality table there is
little change in the concentration of income and
opportunities.
Amid this context of exclusion, violence
and inequality, the Brazilian university is born
without being touched by the Humboldt Reform
of Higher Education in the 19th century, who
introduced into the German institutions the
methods of the experimental sciences and the
dialogue with the productive sectors as part of
their identity, something previously banished
from the high culture – a characteristic that until
then was predominant, an inheritance of medieval
universities, where practical knowledge wasn’t
accepted.
It becomes then characteristic of a
significant part of the Brazilian university scene
the estrangement from social life, such as ivory
towers where critical thinking is considered
something exclusive to the wise and enlightened.
Spaces populated by a majority of academics
who spend their lives in the midst of hard worked
publications and poorly read, with no social
impact. Or entangled in highly specialized infertile
discussions on very small areas of knowledge
that only draw attention of a small number of
researchers, also dedicated to these.
It is still possible to identify in many the
colonial paradigm, which considers adequate and
desirable to keep Higher Education accessible
to few. As if meritocracy could happen naturally
in this unequal context of opportunities and
resources.
However, there is a worldwide movement
that encourages the expansion of enrollments
in Higher Education, within the perspective of
education as a right for all and a basis for equal
opportunities. It’s a phenomenon that’s in tune
with the conception of the Modern State, liberal,
democratic and social, "in which all transformed
into sovereigns without distinction of class, claim,
in addition to the rights of freedom, also the social
rights, which are also rights of the individual".
An additional challenge that demands
the expansion of supply and access to quality
Higher Education is the rapid pace of the changes
brought by digital technologies, in which the list
of sectors touched by them expands and, unlike
the typical innovations of the first industrial age,
the benefits of technological change are no longer
widely distributed.
The consequences on employment will be
devastating, especially as the machines start to
decide on their own, without human intervention.
Due to automation, many jobs are at stake,
especially those occupied by people with few
years of formal education. The damage tends
to be bigger where the occupational structure
is more distant from the knowledge economy,
EDUCATION AND DIGITAL
INNOVATION, FOR A NEW
ETHICAL HORIZON IN THE
FIGHT AGAINST INEQUALITY

2. REFERENCE REFERENCE
31UEMAnet • PoloUm Magazine UEMAnet • PoloUm Magazine30
a situation in which Brazil finds itself by its
economy predominantly based on the export of
commodities.
History shows that the correlation between
technical and scientific progress is directly related
to economic progress, but without necessarily
promoting social or environmental advances.
Judging by the past 30 years, it has been observed
that labor markets have undergone changes that
are largely responsible for the re-concentration of
wealth in developed countries, particularly in the
United States.
Brazil has an enrollment rate of only 17.6%.
It’s the percentage of the population of ages 18
to 24 in Higher Education, that is, the number
of students enrolled from 18 to 24 years old in
Higher Education divided by the total population
of 18 to 24 years old. This is proportionately half
of the Latin American neighbors.
And even in periods of economic and
political crises a graduation degree seems to be
the best antidote to unemployment, if compared
to other portions of the population with lower
level of formal education. In 2015 there was a
3.3% reduction in the total number of formal
jobs compared to 2014. For employees with
elementary education, the reduction was 5.9%.
For employees with high school education, the
drop came to 2.1%. As for employees with higher
education, the drop was even lower, 0.9%. The
calculation took into account the final stock
of formal jobs in 2014 and the difference in
the monthly balance of formal jobs - number
of admissions subtracted from the number of
dismissals in the period.
If it is possible to identify a trend in Higher
Education, is that Distance Education (DE)
has expanded more than attendance classes.
The number of people attending face-to-face
courses in Brazil increased by 6.8%, comparing
2013 with 2014. In the DE courses the increase
of people in the same period reached 41%. In
2014, the number of graduates in face-to-
face courses was 841,000 students, 615,000
in the private network and 226,000 public
universities, a figure of 0.8% higher than in
2013 when it registered 834,000 graduates. In
DE, the number of graduates reached 190,000
with 174,000 in the private network and 16,000
in the public.
From the chart below it’s possible to
verify that the number of enrollments in DE grew
66% from 2009 to 2015, double the increase
of classroom courses. With the recent changes
promoted by Decree No. 9,057, May 25, 2017
and by MEC Normative Regulation No. 11, June
20, 2017, the prediction is that the percentage
of students enrolled in DE graduation courses will
reach 30% of the total university population by
the year 2020.
The DE is one of the initiatives to compose
a response to two major challenges of Higher
Education today. First, expand enrollment volume
faster and with quality. And respond with
innovation to the new ways that people have
learned to inform, learn and disseminate knowledge
in the context of digital innovation.
DIGITAL INNOVATION
Digital innovation is related to Information
and Communication Technologies – ICT. It’s what
has been driven productivity growth, still subject
to an unequal diffusion of use throughout society,
which generates a new type of exclusion.
In light of different definitions proposed in
the literature it’s possible to understand digital
innovationinthestrictsenseastheimplementation
of a new or significantly improved ICT, that is, within
the category of information and communication
technologies In a broader sense, it includes using
ICTs to implement a significantly improved new
product or process, a new marketing method, or a
new way of organizing business practices, people
management, or external relations.
Digital innovation can be disruptive and
induce "creative destruction" of established
ventures, markets and value networks, as well as
challenge existing regulatory guidelines. These
disruptive effects can be perceived as threatening
both by individuals and by businesses and
governments.
The fear of change combined with short-
term thinking generally results in new technologies
and digital innovations marketed for the first time
by startup companies or new entrants from other
segments. These can take advantage of starting
without the legacy of a previously existing base
and experimenting with creating a variety of
presumably new business models.
That said, digital innovation isn’t always
disturbing, even though it may be revolutionary,
new and unexpected. It may only involve
incremental improvements, for example, the use
of e-commerce by a reseller doesn’t necessarily
require drastic changes and is instead an
evolutionary improvement of the established
business model.
One of the factors that undermine or delay
the ability to adopt digital innovation is difficult and
costly access to hardware, software and Internet
bandwidth infrastructures. Also, highlighted as a
potential barrier is the increase in digital security
risks perceived by potential adopters.
Of course, there is no technology or science
that can claim absolute neutrality. And the risks
are increased when the boundaries between the
biological and the prostheses tend to be diluted,
for example. Just as unfortunately, there is a
growing crisis in education due to the number of
entrepreneurs who are trying to exclude or reduce
as much as possible the importance of the teacher,
in a mistaken conception of the educational process
and because they are committed to the primacy of
profit at any price.
It is worth remembering the Hans Jonas's
concept of 'heuristic of fear', which is not a paralyzing
fear but one that invites us to take responsibility as
theprincipleofaction.Therisksposedbytechnology
threaten the present and the future, and thinking
poorly is more persuasive than thinking properly
and appears to us in a more explicit and evident way.
Fear then becomes, to Jonas, the first obligation of
an ethic of historical responsibility. Fundamental to
deal with this new world.
Faced with a monumental and paradigmatic
transformationthatweface,DEispartofamovement
that leads to digital innovation in education.
Learning with technology involves learning
situations in which the teaching-learning
relationship is established with the help of a device
or software, such as a computer or the Internet. At
some level, almost all learning involves technology.
For example, in a traditional lecture, an instructor
can use chalk and a chalkboard, thus employing an
old but reliable technology. Similarly, a book is a
form of technology, already in its accumulated 500
years of history.
An important and possible advantage, if
properlyused,ofcomputer-basedtechnologyisthat
it allows multimedia presentation, with messages
that include spoken or printed words and images
such as animation, video, illustrations or photos. It
also allows differentiated and personalized levels
of interactivity and recovery of information that
otherwise would be impossible.
59.611
727.961
1.393.752
4.163.733
5.080.056
6.633.545
0
1.000.000
2.000.000
3.000.000
4.000.000
5.000.000
6.000.000
7.000.000
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
EAD 59.611 114.642 207.206 369.766 727.961 838.125 930.179 992.927 1.113.850 1.153.572 1.330.124 1.393.752
Presencial 4.163.733 4.453.156 4.676.646 4.880.381 5.080.056 5.115.896 5.449.120 5.746.762 5.923.838 6.152.405 6.497.889 6.633.545
Chart 1 - Evolution of enrollments in Graduation by modality – 2014 to 2015
Source: INEP/MEC

3. 3332
REFERENCE INTERVIEW
UEMAnet • PoloUm MagazineUEMAnet • PoloUm Magazine
There are three important principles of
cognitive science research that must be taken into
account when adopting teaching with technology:
Double Neural Trails: people have separate
pathways in the brain for processing verbal and
visual materials;
Limited capacity: people can process only small
simultaneous amounts of material on each neural
trail;
Active processing: meaningful learning occurs when
students engage in appropriate cognitive process
during learning, such as attending to relevant
material, organizing it into a coherent representation
and integrating it with relevant prior knowledge.
And when we talk about learning it is important
to differentiate the three types of memories that can
result from the teaching-learning process:
Sensory memory: contains all visual information
received (visual sensory memory) and all perceived
sounds (auditory sensory memory) for a short
period of time;
Working memory: contains a limited number of
selected words and images for further processing;
and
Long-term memory: knowledge of deep meaning.
Table 1- Cognitive process required for active
learning with technology
Process Descrição Tipo de Memória
Select
Pay attention to
relevant words and
images
Leads the information
from the ‘sensory
memory’ to the
'working memory'
Organize
Arrange selected
words and images
into coherent mental
representations
Handles the
information on
'working memory'
Integrate
Connect verbal
and image
representations
between
themselves and
with the previously
constructed
knowledge
Takes the information
from ‘long-term
memory' to the
'working memory'
Source: DUMONT, H.; INSTANCE, D.; BENAVIDES, F. (2010)
Research and data should be more widely
disseminated as elements that contribute to the
formulation of public policies intended to expand
teaching with technology. Neuroscience and
the relationships established in social networks
can provide very useful and practical data to
collaborate more effectively in the teaching-
learning relationships.
There are several factors associated with
the increased use of ICT in teaching. For example,
participation in professional development activities
involving individual or collaborative research, or
the formation of a teacher network that makes it
more likely that a teacher will use more often ICTs
to work with students.
It is necessary to invest in teachers,
educational managers and technical staff, as well
as in schools and other learning spaces, to try to
take Brazil out of self-imposed delay by those who
have always occupied power. The DE collaborates
with the democratization of access to higher
education and will have higher or lower quality
according to the institution that offers the courses.
The same happens with face-to-face teaching.
REFERENCES
ALENCASTRO, L. F. O trato dos viventes: formação do Brasil
no Atlântico Sul. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2000.
BOBBIO, N. A era dos direitos. Rio de Janeiro: Elsevier, 2004.
DUMONT, H.; INSTANCE, D.; BENAVIDES, F. (Orgs.). The
nature of learning: using research to inspire practice.
Paris: OCDE, 2010.
JONAS, H. O princípio responsabilidade: ensaio de
uma ética para a civilização tecnológica. Rio de Janeiro:
Contraponto; Ed. PUC-Rio, 2015.
MARREIRO, F. Série inédita brasileira mostra salto
da desigualdade no começo da ditadura. El País,
04/11/2015. Disponível em: <https://goo.gl/Hfh37g>.
Acesso em: 19 ago.2017.
OLIVEIRA, R. Para uma universidade tecnológica de alto
impacto econômico, social e cultural. In: GUERRINI, D.;
OLIVEIRA,R.(Orgs.).Universidadesedesenvolvimento
regional: experiências internacionais e o caso das
universidades comunitárias do Rio Grande do Sul.
Lajeado, RS: Editora da Univates, 2016.
SEMESP. Mapa do ensino superior 2016. São Paulo:
Semesp, 2016.
TEIXEIRA, A. O ensino superior no Brasil: análise e
interpretação de sua evolução até 1969. Rio de Janeiro:
Editora da Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 1989.
WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM. The future of jobs:
employment, skills and workforce strategy for the fourth
industrial revolution. Disponível em: <https://goo.gl/
NYxyQy>. Acesso em: 25 jul.2017.
W
ith years of research and teaching, Romero Tori has gathered his
experiences and studies in the literary work "Education without
distance". The book addresses the distance between students,
teachers and content that happens in face-to-face higher education.
The author points to the use of technology as a way to reduce geographical,
social and educational distances. Another way to maintain the efficacy of this
method is to invest in the pedagogical update of teachers so that they can keep
up with the technological use of their students. In an interview for PoloUm,
Tori points hybrid education as a way to reduce distances, to make students
more disciplined and independent in the learning process.
What is the concept of Education
without distance?
Romero Tori - This is not a new type of education.
On the contrary, this idea put as title of my book,
seeks to emphasize that, whatever the media and
educational methodologies used, one must always
seek to reduce the distances between student
and teacher, student and content, students and
their colleagues. The term “Distance Education -
DE”, on the other hand, emphasizes the problem.
The contraposition between DE x Face-to-face
Education makes no sense, since it is possible
and desirable to have the student present (even
at a distance) in DE and students virtually absent
in traditional classrooms. The flexibility and
convergence of both modalities in the so-called
"Hybrid learning" (Blended Learning) is a trend. In
this context, the reduction of distances, including in
the physical classroom, should always be pursued.
Are the networked world and
the new technologies related to the Internet
reorganizing the learning process?
Romero Tori - People learn in different ways and
paces. The traditional classroom is extremely
limiting, especially from the perspective of a
young person who grew up in a connected,
virtualized and interactive society. Limited in
time and physical space; limited by not adapting
to the different needs of each student; limited
to a certain number of students; limited by
not enabling parallel interactions. The ease of
access, communication and interaction of new
technologies, interactive and networked, allows
the breaking of all these limits, providing a real
education without distance.
How to insert Brazilian
education, with so many structural limits, in
this new learning process?
Romero Tori - Today more people, even from poor
communities and far from large centers, can access
the Internet through mobile devices. Of course,
the Internet is still expensive and slow in Brazil.
Much need to be improved, but the current problem
has more to do with culture than infrastructure.
Brazilians still have difficult managing their own
learning. There is also a culture that you only
learn by going to a traditional school. The evasion
indicators of distance education courses are still
very high. However, the new generation – born
and raised in the 21st century – should have fewer
problems with the autonomous learning and the
use of technology. They are getting use to search
for information on the Internet instead of asking an
adult. It's a generation that will make heavy use of
apps to get around, to stay, to relate, to eat, to get
dress, to have fun, to date and, why not, to learn
too. There will be no barriers to this new generation.
Education, as well as "without distance" will be
"without limits".
ROMERO TORI
(Dr. in Electrical Engineering and Professor at USP)

4. &
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Ano V nº 11 2017 ISSN 32317-532X
na prática
UEMA prepara docentes para
atuar em cursos intermediados
por tecnologias digitais
na prática
UEMA prepara docentes para
atuar em cursos intermediados
por tecnologias digitais
na prática
UEMA prepara docentes para
atuar em cursos intermediados
por tecnologias digitais
ENTREVISTA
ROMERO TORI
ENTREVISTA
ROMERO TORI
Prof. Dr. em Engenharia Elétrica
e livre-docente/USP fala sobre Educação sem distância.
Prof. Dr. em Engenharia Elétrica
e livre-docente/USP fala sobre Educação sem distância.
ENTREVISTA
ROMERO TORI
Prof. Dr. em Engenharia Elétrica
e livre-docente/USP fala sobre Educação sem distância.
UEMA lança livro sobre Tecnologias
Educacionais durante o SIIES
UEMA lança livro sobre Tecnologias
Educacionais durante o SIIES
UEMA lança livro sobre Tecnologias
Educacionais durante o SIIES