Distance education, information and production teams: Connections necessary for the production of teaching materials

This article discusses the results arising from research conducted as part of training in the graduate program at the doctoral level at UFMG / MG, Brazil, and the goal of the research was to analyze, in the field of Distance Education (DE), the importance and contribution of information in production teams, in order to demonstrate the relevance and interconnection between these elements and their effectiveness for the production of teaching didactic materials. To do so, it became pertinent to recover the institutionalization of the DE in Brazil, their strengths and achievements in the national context and to discuss about the theoretical support of information from the perspective of Information Science, as well as to analyze the functions and roles related to production teams. It was possible to map the academic standing of DE in Brazil, and the data collected let us to identify and characterize the amount of accredited educational institutions, courses or programs authorized by the Ministry of Education and Culture to offer DE courses. Through this assessment, we have sought to learn, in objective terms,  what  mechanisms are involved in the production of didactic materials for DE by production teams, as well as how to properly assimilate Informational matter into these mechanisms. The consolidation of these elements has provided us with a framework to propose a new model for the production of teaching materials for DE, with the goal of identifying and underlining the importance of the treatment of the informational actions in the steps of the production process. It is noteworthy that the informational perspective in the context of the production teams and the functions of selection, organization, processing and dissemination of information are needed, given its contribution to the production of materials - analysis that let us to discuss its contribution to national education and citizenship.