SAO PAULO, Oct. 2, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Veduca (www.veduca.com.br) a Brazilian EdTech company whose purpose is to democratize access to top quality higher education, is introducing the world's first open online MBA program, at an inaugural event set to take place this Tuesday, October 1^st.  The study program is an MBA in Engineering and Innovation (www.veduca.com.br/mba), intended for professionals and entrepreneurs with college degrees working in process management with a focus on innovation.

All content is based on video classes and will be open starting on November 5th to any person with access to the internet who is interested in the subject. "This is the first time that the full content from an online MBA classes with guest lecturers from distinguished universities will be openly available," says Carlos Souza, CEO of Veduca. The lineup of guest lecturers brought together by Veduca features professors from some of Brazil's best engineering schools. They are: Marly Monteiro de Carvalho, Erik Rego and Mario Salerno (Escola Politecnica da Universidade de Sao Paulo), Daniel Capaldo Amaral, Joao Fernando Gomes de Oliveira and Henrique Rozenfeld (Escola de Engenharia de Sao Carlos da Universidade de Sao Paulo) and Paulo Augusto Cauchick Miguel (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina).

Certification program

Whoever wants a certificate validated by the Brazilian Ministry of Education to serve as proof of (post-graduate) specialization, can enroll in a paid certification program that includes all the support that a student needs to study, receive guidance and be evaluated to demonstrate the knowledge acquired. One of the requirements of the Ministry of Education is for students to take in-person exams for each subject.  In addition, it is required to prepare and submit, also in person, a final project for course completion (TCC – trabalho de conclusao de curso) to a panel of examiners. It is a project that requires organization and more than 360 hours of dedication to the learning process.

As a partner in the certification program, Veduca has the UniSEB University Center, part of the SEB group, known as one of the best service providers in distance learning in Brazil. UniSEB has always achieved top ratings in the General Course Index (IGC – Indice Geral de Cursos), a quality indicator for institutions of higher education that evaluates everything from infrastructure to the training of the teaching staff. Through this institution, Veduca can offer students applying for a certificate tutoring and individual orientation in each subject and support in their work on the TCC. Each subject has a professor in charge, an instructor at UniSEB, with a master's degree or doctorate, as well as tutors who can assist students whenever necessary through online forums and chat. UniSEB also provides the infrastructure needed for the certification process. There are more than 200 centers in Brazil for taking in-person exams and the defense of TCC's by certificate candidates.

"We embrace Veduca's proposal of seeking to expand our actions for social inclusion, offering quality instruction openly for anyone who is interested," says Jeferson Ferreira Fagundes, Dean of Distance Learning at the UniSEB University Center. "In the certificate program, our commitment will be to enrich content that is openly available, leading candidates to achieve certification as the culmination of their studies.  We are certain that we are embarking upon a great, innovative and successful partnership."  

The MBA in Engineering and Innovation is coordinated by Professor Ronaldo Mota, a CNPq researcher and former National Secretary of Technological Development and Innovation for the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, as well as former Secretary of Higher Education and Distance Learning for the Ministry of Education. "The digital technologies and the innovative educational methods that we are proposing make it possible to combine scale with quality, thus enabling us to train professionals and citizens who can face up to the challenges of a world centered on innovation without fear and with outstanding competence," says Mota, who is also one of the creators of the world's first open online MBA, together with Veduca. "This MBA will be a milestone in the history of quality higher education, and will be accessible in the most strategic area where the need is greatest in current times," he emphasizes.  

"Today we are launching so much more than an online program of study with open content of the highest quality. We're launching a new democratic model of education, which makes it possible for students' efforts and knowledge acquired through an open content to be proven by a certificate validated by the Ministry of Education," says Carlos Souza.

What's next

At the event, Veduca will also be announcing its next open online extension courses, which will follow the same model as the MBA in Engineering and Innovation, and will have as partner institutions for the certificate program HSM Educacao and the Instituto Tecnologico de Aeronautica (ITA – Aeronautics Technological Institute). The new programs of study will be inaugurated starting in the first semester of 2014.

It is not the first time that Veduca has innovated with initiatives to expand access to quality education and rethink the way that people study. The company was created in March of 2012, and has helped to popularize the open course movement at the world's greatest institutions of higher learning by making content available from foreign universities with subtitles in Portuguese. In June of 2013, it launched the first MOOCs (massive open online courses) with certification in Latin America, in partnership with professors from USP and the University of Brasília (UnB). 

The launch of the MBA in Engineering and Innovation marks Veduca's first unprecedented initiative on a global scale.

About Veduca

Veduca was founded by Brazilian engineers Carlos Souza, Marcelo Mejlachowicz, Andre Tachian and Eduardo Zancul and was launched in March of 2012. Veduca has assembled more than 5,600 classes from 17 of Brazil's and the world's leading universities, such as Harvard, Stanford, Yale, MIT, Berkeley, USP, Unicamp, Unesp and UnB.  Since then, it has had 3 million hits, 1.5 million of them single visits. It has 156 thousand registered users, and nearly 35 thousand followers on social networks. It launched the first MOOCs in Latin America with certification in June of 2013, in partnership with professors at USP and UnB. In October of 2012, the company received an investment of  1.5 million reais (750k USD) from the investment funds Bolt Ventures and 500 Startups, from the investor-angel Nicolas Gautier, and from Macmillan Digital Education – part of one of the largest and most well-known publishing groups in the world, Macmillan Publishers.

Information for the press:

MISASI COMUNICACAO
Daiane Amaral – daiane@misasi.com.br
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SOURCE Veduca