Online Scientific Volunteering: the technological immersion for the co-construction of knowledge, employability, entrepreneurship and innovation in a logic of inclusion

“We all have something to learn and something to share” is the motto of this project, through which we aim to assess the impact of a multilingual platform which combines and makes the most of the potentials of digital environments and favours inclusion, in the co-construction of knowledge in learning/practice, in employability, entrepreneurism and innovation. In this article we will introduce an ongoing project which is founded on the principle of openness to the research community. Its philosophy is Online Scientific Volunteering for the co-construction of knowledge about learning best practices. The platform that will emerge from the project will be open access. The academic community, whether national or international, can contribute with content and knowledge to the platform, through interaction and discussions around relevant and emerging topics. The community may also exploit, without encumbrance, the contents of the platform for their own benefit. This way students and scientific expertise can share in a common knowledge space, and together build a comprehensive knowledge base.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

DID.VALUE: an international project focused on building an open digital framework for educational resources on inclusive jobs and traineeships for young people with disabilities

The study in question focuses on the development of a digital and open framework, with the objective of being an educational resource for young adults over the age of 18 years and with intellectual disabilities. This project is part of an international initiative called DID. Value and aims to empower young adults for inclusive internship and employment scenarios. This framework consists of an adapted model of digital training, in which the adopted methodology goes through a phased process, step-by-step and using the various digital tools, to make the learning experience the most intuitive possible. Furthermore, this model used two resources widely utilised in online education, Perusall and Moodle to establish a platform rich in interactive content. In addition, other features such as H5P, interactive manuals, videos and virtual scenarios were used to enable a unique experience for participants, including real-life contexts, with challenges, activities and exercises that would lead participants to have an active and contributory position. Thus, we will analyse the building model of this framework, understand the best practices achieved in terms of content and structure for online teaching and training. In addition, we will make a brief analysis of the use of some specific digital resources and why they are best suited for this type of target audience.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

"Flavours in Ead" an Innovative Concept and Approach for an Intuitive and Effective E-learning Course

E-learning has changed significantly since the pandemic. In the early months of 2020, our whole educational framework suffered from several side effects that needed to be corrected to ensure an effective and alternative way of teaching. Therefore, new methods and methodologies needed to be outlined to address the students’ learning needs. Regarding Higher Education, students and teachers were used to a more traditional way of teaching, yet strategies had to be implemented to maintain teaching in a higher level of performance. Thus, a methodology called “Flavours in EaD” was developed. This strategy comprised several actions and steps on how to build a robust, intuitive, and flexible E-learning course in the COVID-19 Pandemic time. What will be presented and analysed in this work as a way of disseminating the research and methodological process related to the “Flavours in Ead” strategy is based on the thought process involving the preparation, verification, development and implementation phase.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Did.Value: a Project Focused on Developing A Holistic Model For Inclusion of Disadvantaged Communities internships and Jobs

As society keeps expanding and growing as a whole, tackling new challenges and disrupt alternatives in order to generate new jobs, educational offers, technological services, health and lifestyle opportunities and other aspects that constitute this large community, it is important to guarantee proper solutions and answers to the needs of those who are at a more disadvantaged background. In this case, we talk about people with disabilities or other communities who suffer from exclusion or face low opportunities scenarios. It is important to ensure that these groups can be included in society and be part of its several systems (employment, education, social affairs, equity, access to technologies, among other aspects). Therefore, The DID. VALUE project is a European action, combining the strengths and experience of three main partner countries (Portugal, Croatia, Cyprus) and other associated partners, that seeks to define and implement a holistic model that facilitates, through disruptive methodologies, innovative integration methods and learning mechanisms adapted to the needs of young people with disabilities and other disadvantaged communities, the social and professional inclusion of these target groups towards internships and jobs. In this sense, this work will describe the processes and strategies that led this comprehensive and integrated model to a deeper understanding of how these target groups can be included in society and on its several layers of composition. This way, generating new knowledge and good practices on which methods and resources can be used as key guidelines to solve these problems in a systemic way.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Visualyzart Project – The role in education

The VisualYzARt project intends to develop research on mobile platforms, web and social scenarios in order to bring augmented reality and natural interaction for the general public, aiming to study and validate the adequacy of YVision platform in various fields of activity such as digital arts, design, education, culture and leisure. The VisualYzARt project members analysed the components available in YVision platform and are defining new ones that allow the creation of applications to a chosen activity, effectively adding a new language to the domain YVision. In this paper we will present the role of the InstitutoPolitécnico de Santarém which falls into the field of education.VisualYzART is funded by QREN – Sistema de Incentivos à Investigação e Desenvolvimento Tecnológico (SI I&DT), Project n. º 23201 - VisualYzARt (from January 2013 to December 2014). Partners: YDreams Portugal; Instituto Politécnico de Santarém - Gabinete de e-Learning; Universidade de Coimbra - Centro de Informática e Sistemas; Instituto Politécnico de Leiria - Centro de Investigação em Informática e Comunicações; Universidade Católica do Porto - Centro de Investigação em Ciência e Tecnologia das Artes.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

NEETin with ICT

Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC) outlines that 49% of EU citizens identified “job creation” and 33% identified “education and skills” as the top priorities for science and technology innovation over the next fifteen years. Both documents justify the needs in Europe for the ICT field especially for the NEET (not in education, employment or training) citizens. On the other hand, Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs (GC4DJ) in Europe identifies: the training and matching digital jobs; certification; innovative learning and teaching; mobility; awareness raising; increasing effectiveness of education; increasing equity and producing positive impact in the economy, as a priority for European countries. NEETin is a project directed to NEET citizens, to be developed by Higher Education Institutions, VET providers and Enterprises in order to help to overcome a social European dimension through lifelong learning. By creating a Joint Vocational Education Training in Digital Competences in a collaboration between VET providers and the Enterprises, widening the access to higher education, in an innovative student-centred learning model to apply in a European level, we aim to contribute to improve the quality of Education. Through this certified JVET, NEET citizens will develop their digital skills and the success of employability of these learners will be enhanced.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

UPTAKE ICT – MOOC on digital employabilty

Uptake_ICT2life-cycle: digital literacy and inclusion to learners with disadvantaged background" is an Erasmus+ project that aims at enhancing digital literacy among adults with disadvantaged backgrounds. One of the project’s outputs is a MOOC on Digital Employability. This paper presents and reflects upon this product, analysing data collected from the students that followed the course as pilot-group. The experience has proved very positive since students recognized the technical quality of the MOOC, as well as the interest, relevance and utility of its contents. A bridge between academia and the work market was established and the students’ awareness of several career opportunities was raised. These various aspects seem to recommend the replication of this MOOC as well as the making of similar ones. The adopted methodology that the trainers involved in this action decided to use aimed at reaching two major target groups: higher education students and other participants that were enrolled in parallel training sessions. Trainees from the Higher School of Education of the Polytechnic Institute of Santarem had two sorts of profile, according to their study area, more specifically, communication and multimedia or plastic arts and multimedia. So, the idea underlying the chosen strategy was to diversify the target population of the MOOC, and to establish a bridge between participants who had more competencies in the field of ICTs (the multimedia class), and those who has lesser skills in this field (the art class). This diversity implied that the achieved results and metrics, both analytical data and statistic results concerning the used platform and the course’s content, included answers given by students with different learning profiles. The MOOC focused on the importance of ICT for employability. It presented information and suggestions on three main areas, Employability, Freelancing and Entrepreneurship. Each module of the course had several lessons since the educational contents were structured into specific sections, each one addressing a key subject and providing sets of examples that helped students to better understand the focused issues. The MOOC also includes video presentations with real life examples of successful entrepreneurs and freelancers, telling about their experiences and giving advice on how to thrive in the current job market. This is an innovative aspect that means both an approach between business and education, as well as to bring students closer to the objective requirements of working life outside schools.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

UPTAKE ICT: A NETWORK OF STAKEHOLDERS AGAINST DIGITAL ILLITERACY

#Uptake_ICT2life-cycle: digital literacy and inclusion to learners with disadvantaged background# is an Erasmus + project that aims at enhancing digital literacy among adults with disadvantaged backgrounds. The partners have produced didactic materials and pedagogical guidelines to meet this aim. Based on these materials, and their didactical exploitation, a network of stakeholders was formed and trained in order to subsequently be able to teach citizens that both have disadvantaged backgrounds and are digitally illiterate or quasi-illiterate. This paper relates how this experience was undertaken in Portugal in what concerns the creation of the Stakeholders' network and presents its results. The reality that has boosted the creation of this project was the shocking situation portrayed in 2013 Eurostat statistics, according to which one in every three Portuguese had never used the Internet. Uptake ICT was then conceived and designed in order to engage synergies to counter this problem, aiming at a variety of focus groups (but paying special attention to learners of various ages that have never used Internet, like adults with disadvantaged backgrounds), in line with the transversal priorities for education, training and youth of the European Commission and seeking to assist in the meeting of the aims of Europe 2020. To add up, it also intended to enhance and to develop ideas that answer to the Societal Challenges’ needs, by sharing and creating scientific, social, technological and policies impact. The main aspects that the project focused on were digital literacy inclusion, re-qualification and employability of disadvantaged citizens, in order to help them to face the present process of civilizational change (social, political, economic, and cultural). The addressed priorities were to contribute towards a reduction of the number of low-skilled adults (re-skilling and up-skilling of adults thanks to lifelong-learning and training), and to strengthen the links between education and employment in the area of ICT | New technologies | digital literacy and digital competences | basic skills. After having identified both the most preeminent needs and ways of integrating ICT in daily life, and a set of good practices already tested in the areas of digital literacy, inclusion and employability, the project team has built a number of educational contents addressing the issues that were considered most relevant in three main levels of knowledge (Basic, Intermediate, and advanced) , and in the four languages of the project (Portuguese, Italian, English and German). The decision to work on the three levels was due to the fact that in the various partner countries there were groups of target audiences that were positioned differently with respect to their level of digital expertise. The teachinglearning materials that were conceived were afterwards reworked in order to fit in a variety of contexts and formats (e-modules, ebook, MOOC). This option for multi-format was taken having in mind different learning profiles, and the need to provide flexible and attractive materials in order to avoid any kind of rejection. Finally, a number of didactical guidelines were produced in order to provide an interface of suggestions to the stakeholders that would use these materials in their classes or workshop sessions.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

e-skills, soft skills & social skills - students' competences on a digital age

The demands on today‟s digital society raise the necessity of students to acquire different skills and competences - a new kind of literacy. Besides digital skills, there is also the need of being in possess of social and soft skills. Learning, due to the advent of social Web and collaborative virtual environments, has a lot to do with socialization. This article aims to know if and how these competences and access to digital and virtual tools can change students learning processes, allowing them to be more participative in constructing their knowledge.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Aprendizagem híbrida: b-learning - da sala de aula ao ciberespaço

O presente artigo, Aprendizagem híbrida: b-Learning – da sala de aula ao ciberespaço, pretende apresentar os resultados de uma investigação que teve como finalidade a criação e a avaliação do impacto de um módulo on-line, como complemento às aprendizagens em regime presencial, no desenvolvimento e aquisição de competências, transversais e específicas, em alunos do primeiro ano do ensino superior politécnico, no domínio das tecnologias da informação e comunicação, mais especificamente no módulo que dizia respeito à linguagem HTML. Não foi nossa intenção, neste estudo, explorar, de forma aprofundada, conceitos tecnológicos inerentes ao e- Learning, mas antes perceber de que forma este paradigma de ensino-aprendizagem poderá beneficiar os alunos na aquisição e aperfeiçoamento de determinadas competências. - The main objective of the present study, Hybrid Learning: b-learning – from the classroom to cyberspace, was to create and evaluate the impact of an on-line training module as a complement to traditional lectures. This module contributed to the development and acquisition of specific and transversal competences in Information and Communication Technologies. We intend to verify the improvement in HTML language, on the competence level, of those students who attend the first year, second semester subject multimedia of a degree in the area of cultural animation lectured at a Superior School of Education. It was not our intention, in this study, to explore inherent technological concepts to e-Learning, but to recognize how this paradigm of teach-learning will be able to benefit students in the acquisition and development of determined skills