Veduca

What it is

Veduca is an online course platform built around free MOOCs. Its own description is short: "O Veduca é uma plataforma de educação a distância que oferece cursos online gratuitos com opção de certificado" (Veduca is a distance education platform that offers free online courses with the option of a certificate). All content, it says, is based on video lessons and is open. The site reports more than 3 million users and 17 courses made with partner teaching institutions, naming USP, FIA and IBMEC; another section mentions renowned professors from institutions and organizations such as USP and UFSCAR.

The home page adds two more numbers under "Nossos números" (our numbers): more than 3 million students have passed through the platform, and the team has more than 10 years of expertise in education. The site says its courses are created by specialists, entrepreneurs and professors from major universities, with the goal of giving as many people as possible the chance to develop the skills companies most want in their employees. The footer credits Inova GS.

How the MOOCs and certificates work

The model is simple. The site explains that its MOOCs are free online courses, and that after passing an online exam (prova on-line) the student receives a certificate. The courses are produced through partnerships with professors from well-known universities, who design and teach them.

The certificate is the one thing that costs money. The free-course section, titled "Cursos Online Gratuitos com Opção de Certificado", says the courses are meant to strengthen a learner's résumé and improve their chances of entering and staying in the job market, and states plainly: "O certificado é R$ 59,90 e opcional" (the certificate is R$ 59,90 and optional). Learners who only want the content pay nothing.

There is no cap on enrollment. The site says every course is unlimited in the number of enrollments and that a learner can take as many courses as they like. Signing up works through a site account or a Facebook, Google or Twitter login, and a newsletter delivers new courses and content. The menu also links to Veduca Premium, a blog, a catalog, a jobs page and a contact page, and offers the site in Portuguese and English.

The catalog

The course archive shows 67 courses, filterable by category, by level (Iniciante, Intermediário, Avançado, meaning beginner, intermediate and advanced) and by price (free or paid). Each listing shows its level, duration in hours, number of lessons and learner reviews. There are four categories.

Cursos Online Gratuitos (free online courses). This is the general catalog, mostly management, science and professional skills. Fundamentos da Administração covers planning, organization, direction and control with success cases from Brazil and elsewhere. Gestão de Projetos covers stakeholder management, project scope, project analysis methods and planning. Metodologia Científica walks a student through writing a final-year thesis (TCC), from choosing a topic to presenting conclusions. Engenharia Econômica covers interest, the time value of money, amortization, payback, NPV, internal rate of return and the cost of capital, ending with a model of a wind power project. Planejamento Estratégico, Gestão da Inovação (creativity, financing ideas, lean startup), Desenvolvimento de Produtos e Serviços (the stages from a product's conception to first contact with the customer), Probabilidade e Estatística (probability as a tool for situations that are not fully predictable) and Gestão Ambiental (environmental policy and management systems within corporate sustainability) round out the business side. On the science side, Física Básica is taught by Professor Vanderlei Salvador Bagnato and covers motion, Newton's laws and energy, and Eletromagnetismo works up to Maxwell's equations. The most popular courses on the archive page are listed at intermediate level with 45 to 60 hours each.

The same category reaches beyond business. Medicina do Sono is aimed at students of medicine, physiotherapy, nursing and the biological sciences, and at anyone curious about sleep disorders. A Coronavírus course was produced by the Ribeirão Preto Medical School of USP in four short modules. LGBT+ Conceitos e Histórias explains biological sex, gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation and includes life stories from Veduca and Serasa staff and guests. Ecoinovação, Ecologia Industrial (cleaner production and its indicators) and Fundamentos ESG e ODS cover sustainability, and Estilo Pessoal, a personal style course, runs five hours over 13 lessons.

Saúde (health). Eight intermediate courses on movement and therapy: a holistic view of the pelvic floor, Hatha Yoga, glute training, injury-free running, sports nutrition fundamentals, therapeutic sports massage, resistance training theory and practice, and treating lower back pain. They are short, from three and a half hours up to 14 hours.

Governança (governance). A Lean Governance course sits in the archive, and the Governança category holds an advanced Lean Governance training program of 40 hours that is marked as protected (Protegido).

Trilhas Tasy EMR (Tasy EMR paths). This category is the platform's most specialized. It holds 20 free training paths for the Tasy EMR system, all marked for every level. A few are in Spanish (Tasy Overview, Flujo del Paciente, and a Ruta Tasy on system administration), and the rest in Portuguese. They follow hospital departments: patient flow, system administration fundamentals (with 272 learner reviews), inpatient ward care, surgical patient care, emergency care, billing under SUS and TISS, insurance authorizations and audits, controllership and accounting, hospital nutrition, the oncology chemotherapy flow, purchasing, warehouse, and outpatient, clinical and emergency-prescription pharmacy. Sizes vary widely, from three-hour paths to the inpatient ward path at 40 hours and 230 lessons.

Who it suits

Veduca suits Portuguese-speaking learners who want free, video-based university-level courses in management, finance, research methods, sustainability or basic physics, and who may want a certificate for their résumé at a modest fixed price. Students working on a TCC will find Metodologia Científica directly useful, and students of health subjects have the sleep medicine and coronavirus courses. Fitness and therapy professionals get a compact set of short health courses. The Tasy EMR paths are a distinctive resource for hospital staff who work in that system, from billing clerks to pharmacists, and they are free.

The caveats are about format and focus. Courses are built on video lessons with an online exam at the end, so learners who want live teaching should know the format is video-based. Most of the catalog is in Portuguese, with a handful of Tasy paths in Spanish.