Simulação de ambiente virtual de aprendizagem de Biologia por meio de fóruns participativos criados no WhatsApp

Abstract

In view of the changes experienced by society in recent decades, including the advent of new information technologies, the teaching of Biology by traditional methods in Basic Education must be rethought. This is because, when presenting the contents ready and unilaterally to the students, they are often demotivated. Thus, this research aimed to simulate a virtual environment for learning Biology in High School, through participatory forums on the social network WhatsApp. Therefore, the subjects of this research are students from two first year classes. Of these, only one, which we call “Vaccine”, had access to WhatsApp as a complementary tool in the Biology teaching process. The other class, called “Serum”, received the contents in the traditional way in the classroom space. The results obtained to date reveal that the students of the “Vaccine” class acted in a more active, reflective, critical and collaborative way, with greater ease to expose their opinions to classmates. In addition, we observed that in this group there was a greater inclusion of students who previously showed insecurity for more active participation in the classroom. It is concluded, therefore, that WhatsApp can be a great complementary learning tool to encourage the collaborative participation of students, in the construction of responses and resignification of content, whether in the discipline of Biology or others that make up the curriculum of high school.