Desenvolvimento de material instrucional com enfoque construtivista para cursos de bioestatística aplicada à análise epidemiológica usando R

Abstract

Recent technological advances implied in an increase on the qualification level of researchers in epidemiology. The importance of the strategic role of education cannot be underestimated. However, the Brazilian Association of Post-graduation in Public Health, in its latest master plan (2005-2009), indicates small valorization of the development of didacticpedagogical material as well as the lack of policies for production and use of free software for epidemiology teaching. It is timely, therefore, to invest in a relational perspective based on a constructivism approach, since this theory has been considered the most adequate on developing electronic didactic materials. Thus, it is also opportune and useful to promote interactive courses and develop related didactic materials. Regarding of policies for development and use of free software for epidemiology teaching, especially in applied statistics, R software has been of an emerging interest, not only because it avoid possible penalties for using non-licensed commercial software, but also because its free access to source code and programming makes it an excellent tool to create didactic material as hypertext, important pillar for a so desired docent-student interaction in classroom. The main proposal is to develop didactic material in R for biostatistics courses applied to epidemiology. Due to the lack of some statistic functions in the software, programming of additional functions was also considered. The courses used on the development of these materials were based on the subject An Introduction to R Platform for Data Statistic Modeling and Measurement Instrument in Epidemiology I: Classic Theory of Measures (Analysis) offered by the Department of Epidemiology of the Institute of Social Medicine of the State University of Rio de Janeiro. The theoretic-pedagogic basis was defined upon the principles of constructivism, in which the individual is an active and critical agent of his own knowledge, constructing meanings from his own experiences. And to the constructivism followed the case based learning methodology constituted by real fact problems. The computational methods were based on the New Technologies of Information and Communication (NTIC). The NTICs explore the search for the consolidation of more flexible subjects, adapted to the very characteristics of the student s learning. The implementation of the NTICs was made through hypertext, which is structure of texts associated by links, making up a net of related information. During the conception of the didactic material, changes were made in the basic interface of the help system of R to guarantee student-material interactivity. The instructional is composed by parts, so that it can provide discussion and information exchange between docent and student.