Digital and distance education at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS) has existed for 23 years and has gone through several pedagogical models. In 2022, UFMS launched the UFMS Digital Program with a focus on expanding access to quality distance higher education. The pedagogical and technological management processes of the distance courses offered under the UFMS Digital Program are based on a macro instructional design, which respects students’ learning time and space (Filatro, 2018). The pedagogical model is based on learning pathways organized by subjects within the Virtual Learning Environment (Moodle). The learning pathway is a structured organization of content and activities that stimulate the development of learning autonomy and offer multiple forms of content interaction (Ota & Rocha, 2021) across various media types (Moore & Kearsley, 2007). The didactic design (Santos & Silva, 2009) is developed by a subject-matter expert based on the syllabus content from the course’s pedagogical project and following the guidelines of the macro instructional design. This planning connects the elements that make up the pathway (content, learning objectives, teaching materials, and strategies for interaction, creation, and assessment) and results in a didactic design matrix that serves as the foundation for configuring the virtual learning environments (Filatro, 2008). In this context, this paper aims to present the pedagogical model and, based on feedback from students’ learning experiences, identify and map the strengths and weaknesses of the model to inform the construction of new guidelines in different distance education contexts.

Keywords: Macro instructional design, Pedagogical model, Didactic design, Learning pathways, Virtual Learning Environments, UFMS Digital Program.