My Learning Experiences going on in Brazil

My Learning Experiences going on in Brazil

My expectations when I came back to Brazil were great, I've worked in a department where the most part of teachers are open mind and eager for news. When I arrive I realized the changes could be greater that I had imagine. Teachers from different campus called me and tried to exchange ideas and experiences, it has been amazing. On the other side, my time needed to be divided in class planning and execution, research, presentations and development work. It's not been easy, but I've enjoyed.

I've applied some techniques and methodologies I learn, or especially I could see in practice in Finland, in my classes. I have planned my courses focusing on students, in order to keep them active, besides giving them more responsibility. I've studied deeper some active learning methods, like PrBL, Peer Instruction, Flipped Classroom, and also I've searched more collaborative and social tools, with the purpose of engage more my students and awaken them to some 21st century skills.

Jamylle, me and Alexandre have made some presentations about our experience in Finland, and it has been very instigator because it has been an amazing opportunity to discuss common problems and propose solutions. I'll offer a 4h workshop in two campus of IFPB, whose title is "Enriching the learning process through social and collaborative tools".

Talking about our development work, it has been so hard, but also very promising. Our group, Design lab, will offer a course "Methods and Tools for Agile Process Management: A Practical Approach" in six different Federal Institutes, they are IFPB, IFES, IFSC, IFSul, IFS and IFB. Our course is supported by standards and principles like Learning by doing, Project based Learning and Active Learning. The main objective of that course is changing the mindset of students and teachers involved, besides developing skills to be applied in future LabDesigns that will be open in those Institutes.

We've worked together, one or two meetings per week, since early July. We've followed the plan drawn up in Finland, with some additions and work phases. First of all, we decided to offer an online course to all teachers related with the course: Petrônio, Paulo, Lukese, Márcio, Flávio (HAMK), Wlamir (HAMK) and Paula (HAMK). This initial course has had two objectives: share the knowledge among members group (practical approach) and prepare templates, repositories and course dynamic, in addition to refine presentations and materials. This first course will finish this week. We welcome three teachers who've been in HAMK and will apply a similar Design Labs idea, they will attend the course.

The next phase is the course itself. It will start on October, 03 and it will end on November, 15. It will be composed by four presencial classes (2 hours each one), six coaching meetings (15 min each) and a Final Project presentation. The number of students and teachers involved with the course depends on each site, for example, at IFPB it will be two coaches (Petrônio and a colleague), and 20 students (divided in five groups of three courses, Internet Systems, Electrical Engineering and Computer Network). In some sites, the course students are IF's teachers too.