Educational Research (ISSN: 2141-5161) Vol. 2(3) pp. 919-925 March 2011 Available online@ http://www.interesjournals.org/ER Copyright © 2011 International Research Journals Review Validation of Didactic Material for DE: Challenges and Proposals Cristiane Brasileiro Mazocoli Silva 1 , Vinícius Carvalho Pereira 1* 1 Centro de Educação a Distância do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (CEDERJ) – Rio de Janeiro – RJ – Brasil Accepted 10 March, 2011 Considering the current expansion of distance education (DE), writing for DE demands accurate and specific competences so it is crucial to search for more consistent criteria for validating this kind of material. In this paper, we try to place this production in the DE debate as we present the traits that distinguish self-instructional material as an emerging genre. We start off analyzing the proposals of English Open University and the Spanish UNED in order to scrutinize, detail and expand the macro- and micro-structural characteristics of the self-instructional genre, considering the European model. Furthermore, we elucidate what might cause this genre specification due to the need to incorporate relevant features of traditional learning to didactically-aimed academic writing. Finally, we present some critical points in which writing for DE is articulated to the available technological resources, focusing on the composition of professional teams who work with DE. Keywords: Didactic material, self-instructional genre, instructional design INTRODUCTION Demands and Gaps We are currently experiencing an incisive stimulus towards academic productivity – mostly among the faculty of graduate courses, but also present in all levels of education. The motto is writing and publishing – even though the two poles of this equation, which include what should happen before writing or after publishing, is somewhat eclipsed (Waters, 2006). We understand the importance of accelerated knowledge production, especially in our context of historical disadvantages as compared to the globalized scenario where there is extreme competition also regarding intellectual production. However, we must emphasize the importance of merit judgment of academic publications in this clearly inflationary world scenario. Indeed, we are also experiencing a crisis in terms of qualified university editorial production, which may be quickly explained as the following: production tends to be evaluated under a predominantly quantitative light, which *Corresponding author E-mail: viniciuscarpe@ig.com.br measures volume and regularity more than acceptance or scientific, technological and social relevance. Hence the creation of an environment in which publications are vertiginously multiplied. But one wonders who reads all this, and what for – the circulation is generally small in number, so that the papers are rarely commented outside the authors’ close circle of colleagues. Following the same process of accelerated academic publication, distance learning emerges and expands at an exponential rate in Brazil (from little more than 600 students, ten years ago, to the current figure of around 2 million students, according to data released by Celso Costa, director of Capes Distance Learning, at the 1st International Meeting of Brazil Open University in November, 2009), and with it come new and important demands regarding expectations of faculty production. This, however, is far from being the focus of attention. Two salient symptoms: there are no more than 100 articles about DE in Portuguese available in the SCIELO website; on the other hand, most training processes of content for producing didactic material (DM) for DE are still extremely fast and take only a few hours, and only when they are truly institutional. Overtly contrasting with this careless, innocent or uncurious vision, however, are the new and heavy