Analysis of engaged online collaborative discourse: a methodological approach

The purpose of this chapter is to present a reflection on collaborative learning mediated by the computer, discussing some difficulties and methodological constraints that we encounter when we try to analyze the interactions that occurred in this collaboration in an online course and the level of involvement in ollaborative discourse produced by participants. For we apply the Speech Involvement Scale Collaborative Computer-mediated Conference.Projeto MEDEIAinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Training material on OER and sustainability models

The objetive of Training Material "OER and Sustainability Models" is to train trainers and it is organised in 3 Units. The learner will be able to: i) understand the approach of open movement; ii) describe/identify specific characteristics of OER; iii) find, select and use/reuse/make one OER; iii) analyse case studies of sustainable models of OER. The Unit 3 focus is to analyse three different cases of sustainable models of OER. The content is an OER.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Nowcasting an Economic Aggregate with Disaggregate Dynamic Factors: An Application to Portuguese GDP

This paper consists of an empirical study comparing a dynamic factor model approach to estimate the current quarter aggregate GDP with the alternative approach of aggregating the forecasts obtained from specific dynamic factor models for each major expenditure disaggregate. The out-of-sample forecasting performance results suggest that there is no advantage in aggregating the disaggregate forecasts.Forecasting; Dynamic Factor Model; Temporal Disaggregation

Shamanic interfaces for computers and gaming platforms

Simpósio de informática, realizado no Porto de 4-5 de setembro de 2014Natural user interfaces are becoming widespread as a focus of research in human-computer interaction. Gestural interaction is an important part of this field, but generally done by mimicry. This raises concerns such as the necessity of creating abstractions for non-imitable commands and the difficulty of finding gestures that are meaningful for a worldwide audience. Cultural backgrounds impart different meanings to gestures. In this research , we explore the concept of allowing individuals to interact with computer systems using gesture from the individual’s own culture, focusing on a software engineering approach to support this idea. The aim is to leverage the rich semantics of non-mimicry cultural gestures to expand gestural interaction to support abstract commands for instructions that do not have a matching gestural imitation. This approach also holds the potential to support the learning of gestural commands, by linking them to the cultural background of each user. The proposed software engineering approach demonstrates the feasibility of planning applications with commands in mind, not specific gestures, separating concerns between gestural identification (which can include cultural background elements) and actual commands

LIRE 2.0 : promoção da leitura e TIC

Os resultados apresentados no âmbito do PISA (Programa Internacional de Avaliação dos Alunos) vieram mostrar que cerca de 20% dos adultos não possuem competências associadas às literacias de leitura que têm como principal consequência uma deficiente inclusão social. Neste contexto é ainda estimado que cerca de 73 milhões de europeus não possuem qualificações para além do ensino secundário, as quais podem ser o resultado da inexistência de níveis mais elevados de literacia. Mas esta preocupação é acentuada pelo facto de relatórios da OCDE terem vindo a demonstrar que os jovens de 15 anos possuem níveis elementares de competências de leitura o que os irá penalizar na progressão dos seus estudos. Apesar de terem vindo a ser fetos esforços para inverter esta realidade, os resultados têm sido escassos. Neste sentido, o Projeto LiRe 2.0 (Lifelong Readers 2.0), financiado pelo programa Erasmus+, tem como principal objetivo promover métodos pedagógicos inovadores que assentem nas TIC (Tecnologias da Informação e da Comunicação) e, em particular na Web 2.0, a fim de se poderem vir a implementar estratégias de promoção de leitura. O presente artigo visa a apresentação de uma revisão de literatura acerca das iniciativas e dos projetos nacionais relacionados com a promoção da leitura com recurso à utilização das TIC e da web 2.0, que tem vindo a ser realizada em Portugal. Desta metodologia de levantamento do estado da arte faz também parte a realização de entrevistas em focus groups com alunos e professores que se pronunciaram sobre os seus hábitos de leitura e a sua relação com as TIC neste contexto. A comunicação releva alguns dos projetos e práticas de sucesso no âmbito da promoção da leitura com recurso às TIC e propõe abordagens à integração da web 2.0 que levem a um incremento da leitura por parte dos jovens e dos adultos.PISA results show that 20% of all adults do not possess adequate reading skills and are therefore at risk of social exclusion. It is estimated that about 73 million European have not been educated beyond secondary level, which may well be read as a consequence of low literacy levels. This trend is further reinforced by the fact that OECD reports have demonstrated that 15-year-olds possess only basic reading competence, which determines low school progression and low academic achievement. Efforts to contradict this trend have been fruitless so far or yielded only slight positive results. The Erasmus+ co-funded European project LiRe 2.0 (Lifelong Readers 2.0), wishes to respond to this need by creating innovative ICT-based teaching that primarily focuses on Web 2.0 resources, to enhance the reading skills of young people. This paper offers a state of the art reflection on Reading promotion through ICT and web2.0 in Portugal; insights on the responses yielded through focus groups interviews with students and teachers on reading habits and their rapport to ICT; as well as some projects and practices that have been successful for reading promotion through ICT and web2.0 resources and applications that have enhanced reading among young peopleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

¿Pueden los MOOC cerrar la brecha de oportunidades?: La contribución del diseño pedagógico social inclusivo

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are open courses made available online at no cost to the user and designed to scale up, allowing for a large number of participants. As such, they are a disruptive new development which has the potential to widen access to higher education since they contribute to social inclusion, the dissemination of knowledge and pedagogical innovation. However, assuring quality learning opportunities to all cannot be simply reduced to allowing free access to higher education. On the contrary, it implies assuring equitable opportunities for every participant to succeed in their learning experience. This goal depends on the quality of the learning design. To be successful, a massive open online learning experience has to empower learners and to facilitate a networked learning environment. In fact, MOOCs are designed to serve a high heterogeneity of profiles, with many differences regarding learning needs and preferences, prior knowledge, contexts of participation and diversity of online platforms. Personalization can play a key role in this process. In this article, the authors describe the iMOOC pedagogical model and its later derivative, the sMOOC model, and explain how they contributed to the introduction of the principles of diversity and learner equity to MOOC design, allowing for a clear differentiation of learning paths and also of virtual environments, while empowering participants to succeed in their learning experiences. Using a design-based research approach, a comparative analysis of two course iterations each representing each model is also presented and discussed.Los cursos en línea abiertos y masivos (MOOC) son cursos abiertos disponibles en línea sin costo para el usuario y diseñados para ampliarse, permitiendo un gran número de participantes. Como tales, son un nuevo desarrollo disruptivo que tiene el potencial de ampliar el acceso a la educación superior, ya que contribuyen a la inclusión social, la difusión del conocimiento y la innovación pedagógica. Sin embargo, garantizar oportunidades de aprendizaje de calidad para todos no puede reducirse simplemente a permitir el acceso gratuito a la educación superior. Por el contrario, implica asegurar oportunidades equitativas para que cada participante tenga éxito en su experiencia de aprendizaje. Este objetivo depende de la calidad del diseño de aprendizaje. Para tener éxito, una experiencia de aprendizaje en línea abierta y masiva debe empoderar a los alumnos y facilitar un entorno de aprendizaje en red. De hecho, los MOOC están diseñados para servir a una gran heterogeneidad de perfiles, con muchas diferencias con respecto a las necesidades y preferencias de aprendizaje, conocimiento previo, contextos de participación y diversidad de plataformas en línea. La personalización puede jugar un papel clave en este proceso. En este artículo, los autores describen el modelo pedagógico iMOOC y su derivada posterior, el modelo sMOOC, y explican cómo contribuyeron a la introducción de los principios de diversidad y equidad en el diseño MOOC, lo que permite una clara diferenciación de las rutas de aprendizaje y también de entornos virtuales, al tiempo que permite a los participantes tener éxito en sus experiencias de aprendizaje. Usando un enfoque de design-based research, también se presenta y discute un análisis comparativo de dos iteraciones del curso, cada una representando cada modelo

OER, Open Access and Scholarship in Portuguese Higher Education

Comunicação apresentada em EDEN 2015 Annual Conference, Expanding Learning Scenarios, Barcelona.The present paper is part of a PhD research, which is being developed in the scope of the Doctoral Programme in Education, specialisation in Distance Education and eLearning at Universidade Aberta, the Portuguese Open University. The theoretical framework for the research is Open Education, particularly the specific fields of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Access (OA). The main objective of the research is to identify and understand the awareness, knowledge and attitudes of scholars in Portuguese public Higher Education Institutions (HEI), regarding OER and OA and, in particular, to compare scholars’ awareness, attitudes and perceptions towards OER and OA in the context of their teaching and research practices. This will also allow us to represent the Portuguese reality and, consequently, position the Portuguese public higher education practices within the global panorama and also may be able to inform future decisions, whether institutionally, governmentally or even within a broader perspective. The current paper intends to present the research project and also to reflect the literature review carried out so far, in order to contextualise the research problem and also to describe the methodological procedures defined for the study

Authoring game-based learning activities that are manageable by teachers

The great ambition of using games as the cornerstone of education is hindered by its associated teaching workload. The BEACONING project developed a framework based on an authoring tool for gamified lesson paths, which has been rolled-out in large scale across Europe. It includes stages for planning game-based educational activities, plus their deployment, monitoring, and assessment. Games are great tools for learning and as such many teachers wish to employ them in their teaching practices. Notwithstanding, using games in education is hard. It is hard to plan the time and the teachers’ tasks; the students’ activities; to keep track of what each student is doing; to assess and provide feedback, and so on – and all these obstacles encumber and limit educational adoption of games [1]. The BEACONING project [L1] acknowledges this and created the concept of a gamified lesson path [2], by linking game plots (the narrative and level design) provided by game development companies with educational activities within a triadic assessment model [3]. Using an authoring tool developed at INESC TEC (Figure 1), a learning designer creates a gamified lesson path by selecting a game plot, linking learning activities structured as missions and quests into it, and finally by associating those activities with specific learning goals and challenges (mini-games). Learning designers are either experts at creating educational content, within companies and organisations, or teachers with training in this area. By selecting a gamified lesson path, teachers can automatically deploy games to their students, adapting them to specific individual requirements. Not only students receive the games as part of educational activities from their teachers, but this deployment is also linked to the learning management platforms: teachers can track which students have not yet started learning within a gamified lesson plan, which ones are currently amidst it and where, and which students have finished it and how. Students can also track which teachers and courses have assigned them gamified lesson plans, and how they are progressing in each. All of this linking is done via anonymization, using the BEACONING platform as middleware, so that gaming companies can deploy games to individual students over the Web without actually knowing who each student is: individual details are kept within the learning management system and retrieved directly by the game on students’ smartphones, without being sent to the companies or even to the middleware. BEACONING provides each student’s game with information on the actual web call to retrieve information such as player names, but this transit of information occurs solely between the student’s smartphone and the school’s learning management system. By using BEACONING to track students’ progress, teachers can better manage their time and effort allocation when employing videogames in school, thus reducing their workload and empowering them to use these as a reliable and regular pedagogic approach “anytime and anywhere”. This authoring and deployment pipeline have now been successfully rolled out in large-scale testing across Europe (Figure 2) [L2]. BEACONING’s prototype and authoring pipeline approach holds the potential for application in many other non-traditional learning activities. Beyond gaming, we are exploring and expanding this approach to enable widespread deployment of active learning, location-based learning, immersive environments, outdoor activities, and more.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

An uncertainties simulation model applied to an automated laminar flowmeter

Aircraft oxygen regulators are a normally used specialized test bench designed to perform tests to the regulators during its work conditions. The tests are performed placing the regulator in the barometric chamber, where low pressure conditions are forced to simulate altitude conditions and then a flow is forced on the output of the regulator to simulate the inhalation of the user. The relevant test flows are measured by laminar flowmeters. These flowmeters are meant to measure the flowrate at pressures correspondent to altitudes between sea level altitude and fifty thousand feet. In this work a way was studied to automate laminar flowmeters used on oxygen regulator test benches. For this purpose, was developed a data acquisition system (DAS) using a microcontroller board and two microelectromechanical systems-MEMSs (a pressure and temperature sensor and a differential pressure sensor). Since these MEMSs did not have factory calibration, they were calibrated in this study. The automated flowmeter was also calibrated. To estimate the error of flow rate measured by this solution, an uncertainties simulation model based on the Monte Carlo method and several calibrations were performed. According to the automated flowmeter calibration, the uncertainty obtained (0.45% fs) is accepted, but the authors only recommend its use for actual volumetric flowrate measurements.publishersversionpublishe