COORDINATION OF KNOWLEDGE PROCESSES IN WEB-BASED DISTANCE EDUCATION

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.