Acompanha: Material suplementar: Doença de Chagas e a resposta imune contra o Trypanossoma cruzi / O ensino, de uma forma geral, tem sido influenciado pelas tecnologias de informação e comunicação (TIC). Associados a estas, surgem avanços de novas descobertas no campo acadêmico de diferentes disciplinas. No caso da Biologia, estes avanços se dão a passos largos principalmente nas áreas de Biologia molecular, Biotecnologia e Genética. Desta forma, e também respondendo a demandas presentes nos PCN+, os quais recomendam um ensino de Biologia que aborde temas contemporâneos, foi idealizado este trabalho, o qual possui como objetivo geral desenvolver um objeto educacional (OE) no formato de conteúdo multimídia interativo, que surge da integração dos conteúdos curriculares com os conhecimentos produzidos em centros de pesquisas. Aqui, buscou-se utilizar o Instituto Nacional de Inovação em Diagnósticos em Saúde Pública, INDI-Saúde, como tema motivador para o desenvolvimento de objetos educacionais para o ensino de Biologia. O propósito do OE é demonstrar como ocorre a produção de anticorpos durante a infecção pelo Trypanosoma cruzi, pois este é um assunto diretamente ligado aos objetivos do INDI-Saúde e que encontra contrapartida no ensino de Biologia. Para a elaboração e estruturação do conteúdo, foi proposta uma metodologia de gerenciamento de projetos com foco nos OE, além do desenvolvimento de roteiros que contemplam como público alvo alunos do 2° ano do ensino Médio e consideram os conteúdos de parasitologia (doença de Chagas, transmissão e infecção), resposta imune primária e resposta imune secundária, além de Biologia celular e molecular. O OE foi desenvolvido no programa Adobe® Flash® Player, estando sob a licença creative commons. Foi elaborado um manual de referência e também um exemplo de utilização em sala de aula, que está disponível no portal “Ciência Curiosa”. O material está assim disponível para uso da comunidade e a metodologia utilizada pode servir de inspiração para o desenvolvimento de novos OE. / Education, in general, has been influenced by information and communication technologies (ICT). Associated with these advances, new discoveries emerge in the academic field regarding different disciplines. In the case of biology, this advancement sprouts especially in the areas of Molecular Biology, Biotechnology and Genetics. The present work takes into account the demands present in PCN+, which recommends Biology education focused on contemporary issues. The main objective is to develop a learning object in interactive multimedia content, integrating curriculum contents together with the actual knowledge produced in modern research centers. In this study, we propose using the subject of the National Institute of Science and Technology in Diagnostics for Public Health, INDI - Health, as a motivating theme for the development of educational objects (EO) in Biology teaching. The purpose of the content is to demonstrate how the production of antibodies occurs during infection with Trypanosoma cruzi, for it is a subject directly linked to both Biology teaching and the objectives of INDI-Health. We propose a methodology based on project management for content development and structuring of the EO. In addition, we developed a study guide aiming at 2nd year high school students, including the contents of Parasitology (Chagas disease transmission and infection), primary and secondary immune response, and Cellular and Molecular Biology. The content was developed in Adobe® Flash® Player, and is licensed under creative commons. Together with a reference manual, an example on how to use the EO was made available at the science portal “Ciência Curiosa”. The EO is thus available to the community and could be used as a reference for the development of new educational resources.

This study concerns the identification of the particular competences required by education, training and development practitioners (ETD practitioners) in the South African National Defence Force to develop suitable and appropriate career and training strategies. An applied research approach and a primarily quantitative approach were used. Questionnaires were completed by the commanding officers or the training managers, as well as the ETD practitioners at the education, training and development providers in the South African National Defence Force to determine the actual utilisation of ETD practitioners. Descriptive statistics were used to determine the roles, core competences, levels of competences and clusters of competences required by ETD practitioners in the South African National Defence Force. In addition, the actual utilisation of ETD practitioners was compared with a proposed competence profile that was based on the literature study in order to determine the competence gap that has to be addressed by means of career and training strategies. / Educational Studies / M.Ed.(Didactics)

Web-based learning should move away from static transmission of instruction to dynamic pages for effective interactive learning. Furthermore, automated assessment of learning should move beyond rigid quizzes or multiple-choice questions. This study describes the design, development, implementation, testing and evaluation of two prototypes of an electronic assessment tool to enhance the effectiveness of automated assessment. The tool was developed in the context of a distance-learning organisation and was built according to a development research model entailing a cyclic design-intervention-outcomes process. The first variant, E-Grader, was developed to test an algorithm for assigning marks to open-ended textual responses. The second variant, Web-Grader, was an interactive web-based extension of E-Grader. It provided immediate interactive support to students as they responded textually to content-based questions. This multi-disciplinary study incorporates principles and techniques from software engineering, formal computer science, database development and instructional design in the quest towards electronic assessment of web-based textual inputs. / Computing / M.Sc. (Information Systems)