Supporting Pedagogical Strategies for Distance Learning Courses

Educational portals, for distance learning courses, have a broader and more focused set of objectives and requirements that, typically, go well beyond the basic and commonly used portal definition as the gateway to the information, Web services and networks. As a matter of fact, portals, when adopted in distance learning strategies, are among the most important embedded design elements in course methods, have a direct relation with the pedagogical strategy used and, as such, have a set of requirements with concise and frequently customizable specificities in terms of the pedagogical approach used and course model adopted (Martins, 2002, 2004). This article elaborates on the requirements to specify and design portals focused on supporting distance learning courses. The basic design principle adopted consists to consider the portal itself a embedded element in course design and, as such, all the implications concerning its design, technology flexibility, multiple media support, ludic interfaces, among others aspects, are considered.