Online courses offered in Brazil: mapping the latest years’ context

Abstract

[EN] This paper aims to map the supply of MOOCs in Brazil, starting from the Godwin-Jones’ assumption that "MOOCs are neither open nor massive, but often regular online simply courses that have been re-branded" (GodwinJones, 2014). At the same time, it approaches the Brazilian context, through an exploratory and descriptive study, based on a qualitative and inductive research strategy, divided into two main phases: the first step maps the MOOCS offered by Coursera and Veduca portals, and the ones delivered by the higher education institutions (HEIs). In contrast, the second phase compares the evolution of a different category of online courses, other than MOOCS: the accredited online undergraduate courses offered by HEIs, through the longitudinal analysis of data from the Census of Higher Education, between the years 2008 and 2013. It concludes that the courses offered are not regular online simply re-branded ones, as there are different provisions, but they are subject to the Brazilian particular regulatory conditions.