Distance education as a service system

Abstract

Distance education (DE) is the teaching method that grows the most in Brazil, and as the enrolment number grows, the challenges expand with it, because the teaching organizations need to structure themselves to attend the increasing demand. In this scenario, DE should be viewed not just in the technology basis, but rather with a systemic view that is compounded by all teaching modality aspects such as learning, teaching, communication, creation and management. Due to this need, it aims to analyse DE as a service system, like it is defined in the Service Science perspective, as dynamic settings of resources (people, technologies, organizations and shared information) to generate a mutual value. In doing so, it proposes the conceptual model DE-SS that provides a holistic vision of relations among resources and stakeholders in a distance education system.