THE E-LEARNING FACILITATOR PROFESSOR

Abstract

With the expansion of digital inclusion and access to new technologies, Brazil has experienced significant growth in distance higher education over the past decade, both in public and private institutions. The Virtual University of the State of São Paulo (Univesp), for example, has reached 80,000 students enrolled in its distance education programs. Similar and impressive figures can also be found in private universities. Managing this broad project of digital and educational democratization requires a wide range of professionals, among whom the facilitator professor stands out as an online mediator. This study addresses the following question: in practice, what does the work of Univesp facilitators consist of, and from a theoretical and normative perspective, how can facilitation in contemporary distance education be interpreted? The specific objectives are to synthesize a sample of relevant Brazilian scholarly works that employ Habermas to examine distance education; to compare normative prescriptions found in Univesp’s institutional documents with practical observations of facilitators’ professional activities; and to infer, from the Theory of Communicative Action (TCA), a communicative pedagogy to reconstruct facilitation in university distance education. Methodologically, the study applies Reconstructive Discourse Analysis (RDA) and a case study approach, incorporating participant observation and document analysis. The results indicate that facilitators are essential to student retention and the humanization of learning in distance education. However, precarious or temporary working conditions hinder the continuity of professional development and, consequently, limit learning mediation, causing facilitation practices to fall short of the full educational potential of online learning.