THE CONTRIBUTION OF DISTANCE EDUCATION AT THE FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF ALAGOAS TO THE DEMOCRATISATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION: AN ANALYSIS BASED ON GOAL 12 OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION PLAN - PNE.
Expansion. Distance education. NationalEducationPlan. HigherEducation.
The latest Higher Education Census shows that private institutions hold the lion's share of total higher education enrolments, and the Distance Education (DE) modality of these institutions has been a major driver of this growth. On the other hand, only less than 3% of the country's distance learning enrolments were in the federal education. The present work aims to analyze, in light of the National Education Plan, the contribution of Distance Education at the Universidade Federal de Alagoas to the democratization of higher education. In order to achieve the objectives, empirical, qualitative, descriptive research will be carried out through a case study at UFAL. For data collection, a questionnaire and interviews will be applied with teachers and coordinators of distance learning courses, managers of academic units and the distance learning management body; in addition to collecting data from the institution's official documents and census and PNE reports. Information processing will be carried out through content analysis, using the ATLAS.ti software and triangulation with the collected data. It is expected the study reveals how UFAL has organized itself to expand distance learning; the academic data of the courses, the academic profile of the students and the internal and external factors that may impact new distance learning offers at UFAL. Furthermore, the study contributes to providing essential information about the institutionalization of distance learning at UFAL, which can be useful in building strategies to expand distance learning at UFAL.