Evasão nos cursos de educação a distância : o caso do campus Floriano do Instituto Federal do Piauí (IFPI)

Abstract

School evasion is the breaking of the link between students and schools before the completion of a certain level. This fact is one of the major obstacles to the successful implementation of educational policies mainly in distance education (DE). In this sense, this study aimed to analyze the causes of evasion in DE courses at the Federal Institute of Piauí (IFPI) Floriano campus. The objectives of this study were to interpret the socio-cultural and technological profile of IFPI students at Floriano campus, identify the main causes of evasion in DE technical courses at that campus and propose pedagogical and technological innovations to reduce the dropout rate of DE students of technical courses. This study is characterized by an interpretative vision, with both a quantitative and qualitative approach. It has an exploratory quality and adopted the action research - in view of the involvement of the researchers with the participants - and the case study as a methodological strategy. The types of research used were bibliographic and field research. The Collection instruments were the questionnaire, the interview and follow-up through the WhatsApp application. Participated in the survey students of technical courses in Occupational Safety and technical courses in Legal Services offered through the distance modality, totaling 200 students. It was established, at the time of admission, that the Occupational Safety course had 57% of male students, more than half were above 27 years of age and 59% held paid jobs. In the legal services course, most of the students were female and 43% of them performed remunerated activities. The most commonly used technological resources were "WhatsApp", followed by e-mail, in addition to wiki and Webquest, which were the least used. Regarding the absentees, it was found that circumvention of female students is higher and that 49% of dropouts do not work. Among the key elements for students to stay in school are the acquirement of a certificate, interest in the professional career and entering the labor market. The major detected causes for dropping out were difficulty to balance the DE course with paid work or the DE course with the classroom course, lack of time to study and technological problems. It is suggested that DE professionals should reflect about the pedagogical possibilities of technological resources, carry out specific courses in DE, create a virtual library and perform monitoring of students. As a result product of the research was created an info-graphics bank with strategies to prevent evasion. Finally, it is advised the use of WhatsApp, email and other resources as tools to support teaching.