Desafios da regulação da EAD no ensino superior no Brasil: Estrutura, diálogo e autonomia institucional

This study discusses the relationship between the normative set that regulates distance education in higher education in Brazil, and essential requirements for the pedagogical quality of the courses. Methodologically, it establishes, based on the literature, central concepts to determine the pedagogical quality in EAD - Dialogue, Structure and Institutional Autonomy -, and applies these concepts to the analysis of a normative document base of the federal regulation (1996 to 2018). The conclusions indicate that two essential pedagogical issues are not addressed in the regulation: the guarantee of adequate teacher-student interactivity (there is no objective metric that prevents the formation of groups with a high number of students per tutor) and the possibility of attending to the specificities of the students and their social context (there is no specific regulatory incentive for the contents and activities of the course to be customized by the teacher throughout the teaching-learning process).