Education is in RNP´s heart, in our daily routine. In addition to all institutional actions, we also provide customized solutions for our partners, which generate several benefits for the country.

We will continue the series of articles about the benefits our clients experienced throughout 2019. Check out the highlights related to Education.

Digital platform of Science at School

In the beginning of 2019, the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communications (MCTIC) and the Ministry of Education (MEC) released Science at School.The program goal is to improve the quality of the science education in elementary and high school in the Brazilian public schools, qualifying teachers and encouraging students to choose careers in the scientific area as well.

The platform that manages, monitors and which is used to assess results was built by RNP. In Science at School, there are four initiatives: the call for institutions to improve science teaching in basic education, which selected 19 projects; the program the National Science Olympiad, in which almost 2 million students were enrolled; the call for researchers with projects to take science to  classroom, in which, there were 138 approved proposals and is in the selection phase; and Science is 10, a project that will qualify teachers by means of a distance course, which shall reach almost 4,000 professionals.

“The actions to be carried out with this program are not separate. They act in synergy, with assessments made regularly to extract indicators that will serve as a basis for qualification of teachers and students. RNP has the role to create the conditions for the repository of data and information about the project data. With the network experience and qualification, we will have the perfect platform to size the structure of a program designed to be disseminated throughout the national territory'', Maria Zaira Turchi, director of the Research Infrastructure and Science Qualification and Education Policies Department of the Training Policies and Strategic Actions Department (SEFAE) of MCTIC, points out.

In December 2019, the “Marco Zero” seminar was held in Brasília, which made the initiative official as a government program. At that occasion, RNP presented the prototype of the second stage, of the platform, which will consolidate all management information of the projects focused on science education and learning in the entire country.

Long-term partnership for education and research in the country - Capes and RNP

Throughout 2019, the Coordination for Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Capes) and RNP consolidated the actions they develop together to benefit education and research in Brazil.

• Joint creation work to understand and bring users closer

A big expectation is the PPGs Initiative, a pilot project that aims to meet the needs and the technological demands of coordinators, teachers, students and researchers of the Brazilian graduate programs (PPGs) to create, implement and promote new ITC services and solutions. 

The differential of this project is the Design Thinking approach combined with agile methodologies, which place the end user at the center of the process and create solutions in a collaborative way.

As a result of the initiative, we have the Remote Meeting service, which enables better experience in holding panels and meetings at a distance. To make the meeting even better, we delivered a kit with equipment for a video collaboration room to each of the 6 PPGs participating in the pilot project, in order to improve sound and video. The PPG members were trained how to use the new meeting schedule feature and handle equipment.

The coordinator of the Geography PPG at Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE) Francisco Kennedy Silva is already a user of the service. “I consider the panels a group space for socialization and, with this service, students are able to participate wherever they are. Another benefit is that, by means of the recording, the students can get the full feedback from the panel, and are able to adjust their thesis later calmly. I want to thank RNP for this and I hope that PPGs from other institutions can try this service ”, the coordinator highlighted.

In addition, NasNuvens and Solidariedade services were tested by undergraduate and graduate students and received 150 feedbacks, which are used for the evolution of the minimum viable products (MVPs).

• Who wants to take a challenge?

One of the highlights of the year was PPGs Challenge which, by means of open innovation, selected three solutions aiming to develop solutions on the topic “import of data associated with ISBN for the Sucupira Platform”, improving the data quality in the post-graduation courses in Brazil. The action was released at WRNP 2019 and it was disclosed on social media and the press, in addition to an action carried out at Campus Party Brasília.

Felipe Gallo, director partner of the startup APPX, who became aware of PPGs Challenge from Campus Party Brasília, was in first place. “Our project created hubs, where it was possible to search for information in single place. It is possible to search for information about books in the database of several players, such as Google Academy, Amazon and ISBN. We unified this information in one system. We made this integration to facilitate search by title, description, as much information as possible about given book”, he highlighted.

• Integration of the intellectual production process

The two institutions, together with other partners, are members of the  National Education, Science, Technology and Innovation Consortium (Conecti Brasil), which aims to create a national platform for integration of data related to education, science, technology and innovation. The purpose is to make it easier for the researcher to search data and account, in addition to integrated management of the research information.

In 2019, Conecti Brasil Consortium adopted Orcid, which facilitates the connection among researchers and their professional activities, publications, work support and relationship. The first part of the Orcid integration to Sucupira and Lattes platforms was completed and they are can be fully used.

• Sucupira version 2.0

To improve the user´s experience in Sucupira, RNP is supporting Capes in the development of version 2.0 of the platform. Sucupira is Capes tool for collection of information and evaluation of the Brazilian Graduate Programs. The new version aims to rethink the different processes that involve the platform, by means of user demand. For this purpose, we are promoting visits to seven higher education institutions to collect data directly from technicians, professors and program coordinators, who use Sucupira constantly.

In 2019, four institutions have already participated in the listening stage, one of the Design Thinking pillars, the methodology used in the project. One of the participants, who spoke with RNP and Capes was Jaqueline Halick, servant at Unesp. “I believe that Capes´ initiative to listen to university employees was very fruitful. We already have a great interaction, but I believe that this meeting strengthened these ties and it was positive for both sides. Capes managed to get an idea of the demands and we, as an institution, also felt heard”, Jaqueline completes*.

*Testimonial taken from the article https://www2.unesp.br/portal#!/noticia/35395/unesp-colabora-com-a-capes-para-melhorias-da-plataforma-sucupira/