COORDINATION OF KNOWLEDGE PROCESSES IN WEB-BASED DISTANCE EDUCATION
Keywords:
Coordination Mechanisms, Knowledge Management, Web-Based Distance Education, Management of Distance Education Courses.Abstract
Web-based distance education in Brazil has grown in the amount of students’ enrollment as well as a
share in the undergrad education market. It has an impact over the operational and administrative
challenges for educational institutions and for the professionals involved in providing this service. Those
challenges appear in a variety of aspects, involving individual characteristics, organizational structure and
knowledge processes. This work aims to identify coordination mechanisms and analyze their contribution in
knowledge management for Web-based undergrad education courses. Thus, a qualitative and exploratory
research has been carried out, involving interviews with Web-based distance education experts. Results
taken from this work present the mechanisms that can be used for coordinating this type of course,
distributed into four categories: (i) organizations’ design mechanisms, (ii) working mechanisms, (iii)
technology mechanisms, and (iv) social (interpersonal) mechanisms. Conclusions show the feasibility of the
use of these mechanisms in the reality of Web-based undergrad education in Brazil.