The Education of Deaf in Higher Education through the Information and Communication Digital Technologies

Abstract

The appearance of Information and Communication Digital Technologies (ICDT) has propitiated conditions for the Higher Education to become able to explore the communicative, pedagogical and didactic potentialities in courses in the Blended Education mode. Such process enables that new teaching and learning modes contribute for the promotion of different educational programs. We emphasize that the synchronous technologies which enable the audiovisual communication on real time such as the videoconference and the asynchronous technologies such as the Teaching and Learning Virtual Environments (TLVE), which enable, among other issues, the repository creation with the contents in text formats, videos and others. In the present text we will deal with the lived experience with the ICDT during the offering of the Graduation Course in Letters – LIBRAS – Bachelor in the Brazilian Signals Language offered in the Blended Education mode in the period from July 2008 to July 2012 by the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) through videoconference and of TLVE. Approximately 900 students participated on this course, allocated at the headquarters, the UFSC, and in 14 poles in Brazil, among them the Faculty of Education of the Campinas’ State University (UNICAMP), where the experience was developed with the participation of 60 students, being 30 students from the Baccalaureate and 30 students from the Graduation course. The course had as general objective in the Graduation to train teachers to perform in the LIBRAS teaching as first and second language. In the Baccalaureate it had the objective of training LIBRAS translators and interpreters. Even though the UFSC’s Project had offered the two course categories, Graduation and Baccalaureate, in the present article we will deal with the Graduation course.