Attempting to regulate distance higher education: reflections on the portuguese experience

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Attempting to regulate distance higher education: reflections of the portuguese experience

In this paper, the authors analyse the RJED draft proposal, highlighting its most controversial aspects, as the limitations it imposes to pedagogical innovation and the specialized role it awards to UAb, and discussing the potential impact such regulations can have in the development of the higher education sector in Europe.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Projecto de comportamento térmico : estudo sobre optimização da espessura de isolamento térmico da parte opaca de forma a minimizar o custo global (investimento inicial e custo de exploração)

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Civil (especialização em Construções Civis). Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 200

Regulating tutoring in distance higher education: the portuguese experience

As the traditional division between course development and learning support gradually blurs in collaborative online learning environments, new requirements for the roles and competencies of tutors have emerged. They are now asked to play a larger part in the design and delivery of the courses, as well as in assessing students. This new approach has been widely used in Portugal, since the Universidade Aberta (UAb), the Portuguese open university, has implemented its virtual pedagogical model, in 2007. However, there is no legal provision for the pedagogical role of online tutors in the country. The Portuguese Government's recent draft proposal for the Legal Framework for Higher Distance Education (Regime Jurídico do Ensino Superior a Distância - RJED), submitted to public discussion in the Spring of 2019, surprisingly fails to solve this problem. The RJED applies a traditional approach to distance education in which tutoring plays just a peripheral role. Tutors are not part of the teaching staff as such and it is not foreseen that they may assess students. Representing a risk to the more advanced tutoring models already being used by Portuguese Higher Education institutions, this regulation has generated significant criticism. In this paper, the authors analyse the RJED draft proposal approach to learning support and discuss the limitations of the tutoring model it promotes. The paper highlights the multidimensional role tutors should play in institutional open online learning support ecosystems and projects how artificial intelligence can contribute to further enhance the new emerging tutoring dimensions in digital learning environments.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Improving word embeddings in Portuguese: increasing accuracy while reducing the size of the corpus

The subjectiveness of multimedia content description has a strong negative impact on tag-based information retrieval. In our work, we propose enhancing available descriptions by adding semantically related tags. To cope with this objective, we use a word embedding technique based on the Word2Vec neural network parameterized and trained using a new dataset built from online newspapers. A large number of news stories was scraped and pre-processed to build a new dataset. Our target language is Portuguese, one of the most spoken languages worldwide. The results achieved significantly outperform similar existing solutions developed in the scope of different languages, including Portuguese. Contributions include also an online application and API available for external use. Although the presented work has been designed to enhance multimedia content annotation, it can be used in several other application areas.This work is financed by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT - Fundacão para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, within project LA/P/0063/2020. The funders had ¸ no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Adaptive Penalty and Barrier function based on Fuzzy Logic

Optimization methods have been used in many areas of knowledge, such as Engineering, Statistics, Chemistry, among others, to solve optimization problems. In many cases it is not possible to use derivative methods, due to the characteristics of the problem to be solved and/or its constraints, for example if the involved functions are non-smooth and/or their derivatives are not know. To solve this type of problems a Java based API has been implemented, which includes only derivative-free optimization methods, and that can be used to solve both constrained and unconstrained problems. For solving constrained problems, the classic Penalty and Barrier functions were included in the API. In this paper a new approach to Penalty and Barrier functions, based on Fuzzy Logic, is proposed. Two penalty functions, that impose a progressive penalization to solutions that violate the constraints, are discussed. The implemented functions impose a low penalization when the violation of the constraints is low and a heavy penalty when the violation is high. Numerical results, obtained using twenty-eight test problems, comparing the proposed Fuzzy Logic based functions to six of the classic Penalty and Barrier functions are presented. Considering the achieved results, it can be concluded that the proposed penalty functions besides being very robust also have a very good performance

Anal herpes

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Relatório de estágio - Follow Inspiration, S.A

Versão final (Esta versão contém as críticas e sugestões dos elementos do júri)O presente relatório de estágio integra a fase final do Mestrado em Finanças Empresariais, do Instituto Superior de Contabilidade e Administração do Porto (ISCAP), unidade orgânica do Politécnico do Porto, no qual realizei um estágio curricular na empresa Follow Inspiration, S.A para obtenção do grau de mestre. O estágio teve duração de 6 meses, decorrendo entre novembro de 2016 e maio de 2017. Assim sendo, este trabalho pretende descrever as funções desempenhadas na entidade acolhedora do estágio, dando a conhecer e a perceber as estratégias financeiras usadas pela empresa que são parte integrante da sua estratégia para se afirmar no mercado e potenciar o seu crescimento. Neste contexto, o relatório divide-se em duas partes: do capítulo I ao III, o objetivo passa pela elaboração do enquadramento teórico sobre projetos de investimento, a importância das start-ups nas economias e as principais fontes de financiamento usadas pelas mesmas; do capítulo IV ao VII, são apresentadas as atividades desenvolvidas ao longo do estágio. A primeira parte procura abordar de forma teórica as decisões de investimento e financiamento, apresentando vários fundamentos para a elaboração e avaliação de projetos de investimento, assim como a seleção das várias fontes de financiamento. Este enquadramento teórico é contextualizado na realidade das empresas em fase de start-up, verificando o impacto destas entidades na economia. É também dada relevância às análises económicas e financeiras realizadas pelas mesmas, de forma a se darem a conhecer a possíveis investidores e credores, para não terem que aceder a financiamento externo. A segunda parte passa pela descrição sucinta da entidade acolhedora do estágio (caracterização da empresa, os seus valores e missão e uma análise de mercado por via da análise SWOT) e a explicação das várias atividades realizadas no estágio, com especial relevo sobre o project finance desenvolvido com o objetivo de projetar uma nova ronda de financiamento por via de private equity.This report is part of the final stage of the Master's Degree in Corporate Finance, attended at School of Accounting and Administration (ISCAP), an organic unit of the Polytechnic Institute of Porto, and documents the internship in the company Follow Inspiration, S.A. This internship lasted 6 months, between November 2016 and May 2017, and was required in order to obtain my master’s degree in Corporate Finance. Therefore, this work intends to describe the functions performed in the Follow Inspiration, S.A., highlighting the financial strategies used by the company that are an integral part of its strategy to reinforce itself in the market and to boost the firm’s growth. In this context, the report is divided into two parts: from Chapter I to III, the objective is to develop the theoretical framework focusing on investment projects, the importance of start-ups in economies and the main sources of funding used by those companies; from Chapter IV to VII, presents the activities developed during the internship. The goal of the first part is to address theoretically investment and financing decisions, presenting the theoretical foundations of the design and evaluation of investment projects, as well as the selection of the various sources of financing. This theoretical framework is adapted to the real context start-ups, examining the impact of these companies on the economy. Is also giving the proper importance to the economic and financial analyses carried out by this type of firms to make themselves known to potential investors and creditors, so that they do not have to access external financing. In the second part, the objectives are a brief description of the Follow Inspiration, S.A. (firm’s characterization, its values and mission, and a market analysis through s SWOT analysis) and the description of the various activities carried out in the internship, with special emphasis on the project finance conducted with the objective of designing a new round of financing through private equity