Educational media in higher Education: teacher education for virtual and traditional settings

This paper aims to present and discuss some questions related to the growing necessity to train Higher Education - HE - faculty to work as subject matter specialist (SMS) or as a tutor in distance education - DE - initiatives. Also, it approaches the case for capacitating HE teachers to use different media in traditional, face-to-face classroom situations or in blended or mixed teaching learning situations. The article begins by presenting a panorama of the teacher training for using media in education and DE initiatives in Brazil, followed by the analysis of some primary results of an ongoing research. To conclude, a program of continuing education for HE teachers that are going to work in DE and media based courses is presented