Luís Pedro

Peer-supported badge attribution in a collaborative learning platform

Badges are used to evidence the users role the achievement of specific goals.Badges are being given to students by students (peer-attribution).The attribution of badges is still mostly in the hands of the teachers.Badges associated with the users role are visible in the profile page.Badges for special achievements in the academic field are mostly kept private. The development of technology and namely of the Internet changed the way learners and educational institutions see and understand learning, collaboration and knowledge construction. In the educational field, game-based elements such as digital badges have been proposed and used to assess, recognize and validate knowledge construction and are considered as an effective way to improve and structure collaborative peer-based learning communities. This paper introduces the SAPO Campus badging system, a project that is being developed at the University of Aveiro (Portugal), which addresses the potential of a peer-supported badging system in the promotion of a more participatory learning community.

Students' Perspectives on Badges in Educational Social Media Platforms: The Case of SAPO Campus Tutorial Badges

This paper, reporting on research at an early stage, aims to analyse the impact of badges when used in conjunction with an introductory tutorial that aims to help users getting to know its most important areas and functionalities. With that in mind, a test session was designed, asking learners new to SAPO Campus platform (an institutionally supported social Web platform), to complete a tutorial, discovering the existence of badges and how they could be earned and associated with their profile page, visible to the community. Learners were also asked about the impact of badges on their desire to complete the tutorial, and their general attitude towards being rewarded for completing several actions inside and outside the platform. Preliminary data reveals that learners considered that badges had a significant positive contribute to make them feel more engaged and motivated to complete the tutorial.

Portraying the self in online contexts: context-driven and user-driven online identity profiles

The emergence of online environments created a space where individuals can work on the construction and reconstruction of the self. Introducing a case study developed at the University of Aveiro – Portugal, this paper discusses the importance and challenges of building a representation the self in online contexts and addresses the main differences between building the self in physical and online environments. Data were collected through the application of questionnaires, direct observation and in-depth interviews, made to the participants of the study, 13 individuals, convenience sample. From the analysis of the collected data, a framework and a model have emerged: the Online Identity Analysis Model. By applying the model to the information shared by each participant in three online spaces (Facebook, Twitter and SAPO Campus, an institutionally supported platform), two main online identity profiles were outlined: the context-driven online identity profile and the user-driven online identity profile. By presenting the main results of a study focused on the construction of the self in online contexts, this paper should be understood as an approach and/or a starting point for a more wider and profound analysis of the online self and therefore contribute to the understanding of the importance of building a presence over the web, advantages and challenges included.

Digital Divide in Higher Education Students’ Digital Literacy

This article explores the Internet-use attitudes behaviors, and skills associated with digital literacy amongst students in higher education. A survey was administered using a sample of 148 first-year students and qualitative data was collected by means of 22 individual interviews and two focus groups. Elements of digital literacy such as confidence in sharing contents, privacy and protection, information literacy skills and ethicality/responsibility surrounding the access and use of digital information were analyzed from participants’ online activities. The research was taken with a particular focus on online activities carried out by students within an academic context. From the data analysis it is suggested that there is some variation in students’ online skills and these are not randomly distributed. These results are consistent with the idea that even among a highly wired group of young adults, the use of ICT does not necessarily mean ‘meaningful use of ICT’.

Academic domains as political battlegrounds : a global enquiry by 99 academics in the fields of education and technology

This article theorizes the functional relationship between the human components (i.e., scholars) and non-human components (i.e., structural configurations) of academic domains. It is organized around the following question: in what ways have scholars formed and been formed by the structural configurations of their academic domain? The article uses as a case study the academic domain of education and technology to examine this question. Its authorship approach is innovative, with a worldwide collection of academics (99 authors) collaborating to address the proposed question based on their reflections on daily social and academic practices. This collaboration followed a three-round process of contributions via email. Analysis of these scholars’ reflective accounts was carried out, and a theoretical proposition was established from this analysis. The proposition is of a mutual (yet not necessarily balanced) power (and therefore political) relationship between the human and non-human constituents of an academic realm, with the two shaping one another. One implication of this proposition is that these non-human elements exist as political ‘actors’, just like their human counterparts, having ‘agency’ – which they exercise over humans. This turns academic domains into political (functional or dysfunctional) ‘battlefields’ wherein both humans and non-humans engage in political activities and actions that form the identity of the academic domain.

Unravelling the Role of ICT in Regional Innovation Networks: A Case Study of the Music Festival ‘Bons Sons’

Since the beginning of the century two thirds of the Portuguese territory is threatened by desertification and the decline of economic activities. To face such trends, regions need to implement innovative strategies that leverage on the endogenous resources of the territory to foster economic recovery and to promote entrepreneurship, creativity, smart learning, and innovation. This paper reports on the study of the Bons Sons music festival as an example of an initiative developed in a low-density population area that mobilized their endogenous territorial resources to promote growth and economic development. The case study, which was based on the descriptive and qualitative analysis of a semi structured interview with the artistic director of the festival, aims at understanding the role of digital technologies in the process of regional innovation. The article contributes with an analytical view of community networks mediation practices and offers a set of tips and recommendations for the effective creation and consolidation of mediation strategies, community networks, and learning ecosystems that foster regional innovation.

Learning Beyond the Curriculum: PLE and the Development of Soft Skills

Abstract In a connected world where information is available at any time and place, learners adopt a more proactive approach to learning, no longer looking at education institutions as the only place where they can learn. When the knowledge economy demands new types of learners – higher education institutions must look at their students as active participants, fostering the development of skills that go beyond the curriculum and recognising learning as a social process that occurs in and outside the institution walls. To analyse how students, institutions and employers see and value the existence of soft-skills and how they can be fostered in an institutionally supported personal learning environment (PLE), a case study is being developed at University of Aveiro aiming to analyse students’ online presence; to identify which soft-skills are more valued by students, the university and the market; to study how those skills can be fostered through an institutional supported PLE and expressed in an institution-supported platform; to afford the importance of an institutional online platform in scaffolding the construction of the learners’ and institution’s digital identity. Data will be collected through in-depth interviews with students from a master degree course (n = 13), institutional representatives (n = 3) and through questionnaires applied to students. Although still in an early stage, preliminary data reveal that students are using the institutional supported PLE to meet their learning needs to build a more formal but more conscious online presence and to reveal the existence of skills valued by the marketplace.

Cognitive Flexibility Hypertexts in the Development of Didactic Materials

This article aims to present an ongoing study which has as its main objective to understand how teachers with different characteristics build didactic materials, in complex knowledge domains, by resorting to a cognitive flexibility hypertext. It will present some preliminary results pertaining to the representations of the subjects concerning the prototype as to three main dimensions: ease of use, usefulness and degree of demand of the prototype for the proposed task. The study is currently at the stage of collecting the final data, and treatment and systematisation of qualitative data, enabling us to put forward some perceived trends relating to some of the research issues.