Digital technologies of communication and higher education: Contributions from theory of activity in teaching learning processes

Abstract

The article presents contributions from Activity Theory (TA) to the teaching-learning processes carried out with the support of Digital Communication Technologies. The studied experience was developed in the scope of the Curricular Component: Education, Culture and Media, of the Degree in Pedagogy course, offered by the Education Center of UFPB, in the distance learning modality. It is a qualitative approach, of a comparative exploratory type, whose empiricism was constituted from activities carried out in a Virtual Learning Environment, such as Moodle. The study subjects are concentrated on the students and teachers of that course, who answered the questionnaire made available in the AVA, with open and closed questions, during six semesters of the years 2016, 2017 and 2018. The questionnaires with the largest number of answered questions were selected for analysis. The data reveal that teachi-ng-learning processes, in the context of Higher Education, with the support of digital communication technologies, based on the fundamentals of AT, presuppose a qualitative transformation of the process and not just a transposition of learning methods, initially conceived for a teaching centered on the teacher, didactically expository, and which reduces the evaluative dimension of the teaching-learning process to the mere performance of exercises and the application of knowledge. As a continuation of this study, we will seek to reevaluate the instruments, strategies and categories of analysis used, in the light of the theoretical foundations of AT.