Higher Education in the Amazon: Challenges and Initiatives

In this paper, we present an overview of the results achieved by a few applications of educational research towards overcoming the difficulties in the Amazon region's educational scenarios for a better higher education. Manaus, the capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas, demands an urgent increase in the number of qualified professionals, mostly for its Industrial Pole. However, Amazonas has a poor record of educational performance in all scholastic grades. The situation is especially critical in the rural areas, where the population, separated by miles of uncharted jungle, is usually only accessible through the rivers. This geographic isolation transforms the simplest educational activities into a daily challenge. A sustainable solution to the lack of professionals needs the ability to reach the students with learning activities wherever they are. In this work we share experiences in two different scenarios: the Capital and the rural areas. For the capital, the authors began a large-scale program to address three aspects: (i) reducing student dropouts; (ii) enlarging the reachable community; (iii) offering different levels of knowledge. Four different learning activities were prepared: undergraduate and graduate classes, a talent development program, short-term events and intensive training. For the rural towns, the authors describe the educational experience with undergraduate and graduate distance learning and the ongoing research using learning analytics and adaptive models based on the LMS Moodle. The results are encouraging, as the measurement of the positive impacts of the reported initiative clearly indicates that a structured program would bring solid and long lasting benefits. It is also worth noticing that the proposed solutions may also fit other learning scenarios.