Jorge Borges

Supporting Accessibility in Higher Education Information Systems: A 2016 Update

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have come a long way on the usage of Information Systems (IS) at the several phases of the execution of their business plan. These organizations are very peculiar in the sense that most of the IS technologies have been developed as a consequence of the research work of the HEIs, positioning them as creators and as consumers of IS technologies. In fact, a considerable part of the IS products, currently available for the education sector, was initially created in a HEI as an in-house development. For these reason, the adoption of IS technologies by HEIs has followed two distinct paths: the in-house creation, previously described; and a current market adoption, similarly to most other companies IS adoption.

Management of surgery waiting lists in the Portuguese public healthcare network: The information system for waiting list recovery programs

This paper presents the evolution of the process for management of surgery waiting lists in the Portuguese public hospital network. We use the perspective of the software development and deployment by UTAD, as a partner of the Ministry of Health, to create an information system to manage list recovery programs. We describe the early status and work, when data harvesting was the core challenge, up to the current automated situation. This paper bridges the PERLE, PPMA, PECLEC and SIGIC programmes, and concludes with lessons learned and suggestions for evolution of the process.

Scholarship Management at the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro: An Update to the Current Ecosystem

The research activities in a Higher Education Institution (HEI) is highly dependent of the development of research projects. Most times, these projects have, at the core of their workforce, scholarship fellows financed by the project budget and responsible for the execution of very specific research tasks. The procurement process, leading to the contracting of these fellows, evolves several internal bureaus, from several organic units of the HEI, in a complex and long process. This work reports on the development of system to support this process. The solution was integrated in the HEI ecosystem in a harmonious manner, by implementing the necessary features and using the other HEI systems features when possible. After a year, the scholarship management system has proved a success, providing the user features to conduct the process as well as the management analytics to proper support the governance of the research area.

International Conference on Technology and Innovation in Sports, Health and Wellbeing (TISHW)

Introduction ObesiTIC is a project which aims to investigate innovative information and communication technologies resulting in a new ICT tool specifically designed for children and teenagers, in order to acquire healthy lifestyles, promoting physical activity and avoiding health and social problems associated with obesity and overweight. This is achieved through its co-design and validation with children and teens following a Living Lab approach through SPORTIS Living Lab, a European Network of Living Lab’s effective member. Objectives 1. To develop an innovative solution that would enable healthrelated behaviour changes, increase motivation, promote physical activity and reduce prolonged sedentary time in users, thanks to persuasive and ubiquitous computing techniques. 2. To be validated by SPORTIS Living Lab. Following SPORTIS aim to involve society in the innovation process, ObesiTIC will be validated by end-users (children and teenagers) combined with the development of the application and final product, in order to suit and respect all the needs and aspects of the users’ requirements. Methods A Living Lab methodology is implemented:

Digital Signature Solution for Document Management Systems - The University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro

The University of Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD), in an effort to streamline processes and reduce bureaucracy, decided to develop and use an in-house document management system to handle processes. However, this practice created additional needs such as the actual digital signing of documents associated with the institution business and administrative processes. This paper explores a solution proposal to this problem, documenting what are its functionalities and how it works. An initial application of the developed solution is also described and analyzed in order to demonstrate the overall adequacy of the proposed artefact and its overall impact to the institution administrative operations.

A Proposal for a Remote Interactive Class System with Sign Language Interpretation

Portugal, as part of the European Union, has general legislation regarding accessibility and inclusion for general purposes, particularly for education. There are several international and national initiatives, including some projects. However, disabled and non-disabled people still do not share equal opportunities. In this project a proposal for a remote class system is presented, which includes sign language interpretation, targeted at those students who cannot be physically present in the classroom and/or need sign language interpretation. The system is based on audio and video communication between the classroom, the student and an interpreter, so that the student can access and understand the content of the class in real-time, as well as be able to interact with the professor and classmates. A prototype is being developed in conjunction with the Portugal Telecom Foundation, which should be a step forward to a new full-featured service targeted at educational institutions and disabled students.

The Portuguese iAP Services Platform as a Building Block for User's Centric Information Systems - The Case of the Higher Education Institutions.

Higher education is a complex business including very different process. At its core are the teaching and research processes and along the edge of the business model are the administrative processes, targeted to the students and alumni. Some of these processes translate into services that must be available during the whole life of the users and the institutions. For example, a higher education institution is expected to issue diplomas during the whole lifetime of its former students. In this context, we’ve been working in order to use the current e-government infrastructure of electronic services as building blocks for some of the features of the higher education institution electronic services. This work proposes the adoption of a set of those services. We’ve concluded a successful testing stage and expect to deploy a full production system very soon.

A Software Tool to Evaluate Performance in a Higher Education Institution

In a higher education institution, professors and researchers may have to perform several distinct roles and activities such as teaching, researching, management, and community outreach. The performance evaluation of these professionals must consider a wide range of information, which is used in a complex evaluation process. This work reports the development and introduction of an information system to digitally manage the complete performance evaluation process in a higher education institution (HEI), including the collection, process, and report of information. The ultimate objective of the project was to electronically support the evaluation process, which was attained by collecting and combining data from several sources and later processed. This approach rendered a viable evaluation process that otherwise would be painful to implement.

Integration of Technologies in Higher Education: Teachers’ Needs and Expectations at UTAD

Experiences with online learning in higher education are increasing in number. This is due to advancements in technology, technological savviness of teachers and students, evolution of teaching practices, and changes in student expectations. That is why understanding learners’ and teachers’ needs, expectations, and perceptions of their proficiency and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is critical to the success of the integration of technologies in higher education. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on teachers’ needs and expectations about ICT adoption in higher education, based on the results of a questionnaire, applied in a Portuguese university. The questionnaire explores what motivates teachers to use ICT tools in the context of teaching in higher education. It also intended to reveal which tools are most used from the ones available, as well as the needs and requirements that are not covered by the existing tools and services provided. The results allowed to analyze the usefulness of the measures implemented for teachers and consider new ones, more appropriate to the reality in permanent change by the constant evolution of the technologies used in the pedagogical practices.

PROPOSAL OF A MODEL FOR THE SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF E-LEARNING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TRÁS-OS-MONTES E ALTO DOURO

This paper presents a model of a system capable of addressing the training needs identified by the University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD). In addition to supporting the typical needs of distance learning/education (e.g., e-learning), it is also intended that the proposed system will complement the traditional classroom-based teaching. This model will have two modules: the physical/infrastructural module and the policies/practices module. The physical/infrastructural module will have the following (control and management) components or modules: e-learning platforms (e.g., Moodle, Sakai) with SIDE (a platform for teaching support developed at UTAD) interconnection; website with educational/training offer and e-learning events; media repository; file storage and sharing service; collaborative/cooperative platform, for the sharing of information and knowledge; scientific repository, for the storage and sharing of work and scientific research, books, conferences, etc.; forum; ticket service/helpdesk, to help solving problems that may arise; Customer Relationship Management (CRM) service (management, relationship and customer satisfaction – student, teachers, other); Learning Analytics system (collection of information about the quality of teaching, evolution and student analysis in the e-learning mode, etc.). Additionally, there will be an assessment/examination space, a contents production studio, and a training studio. The policies/practices module includes the institution policies, and including policies for the creation/ dissemination of curses, implementation of course evaluation strategies and continuous improvement, training policies, recognition of the merit and effort of teachers, the training in using the system, the policies for the creation of physical spaces equipped with the necessary tools (computers, cameras, video-conferencing, etc.), among other. In line with these, UTAD has come to recognize that e-learning should be part of its strategy for its training offer and, consequently, is being adopting new policies, namely through the signing of protocols with other institutions with more experience using e-learning. To achieve these objectives, a detailed review of other models and systems that have been successfully implemented in other international reference universities will also be presented here.