Luísa Aires

Education, digital inclusion and sustainable online communities

In support of the urgent call for climate change mitigation and pursuing the vision of sustainable, circular economy, increasing number of universities have been developing courses to prepare students in meeting the growing demand for green and sustainability related jobs, which require systems perspective training in Industrial Ecology (IE) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA analyses emissions and resource extractions from mining and processing of resources (cradle) to disposal of wastes and residuals (grave) and even back to cradle. This paper plans to contribute in developing an online-based information system which provides an interdisciplinary approach to teach IE and LCA for sustainable industrial development. Specifically, the aims of this e-learning project are: (1) To develop innovative teaching and learning materials in line with flipped classroom strategies and (2) To create a one-stop Blackboard in support of learning the principles and concepts of IE and LCA for Sustainable Production and Consumption. Though the developed materials are used first to support faceto- face learning, this is being leveraged to meet demand for distance/online LCA education in the near future..

From Dissemination to the Domestication of Digital Technologies in Rural Communities: Narratives of Parents and Teachers

Reaching beyond access to technical resources, digital inclusion is associated with the development of know-how and skills that have enabled individuals to participate in collective life, whereas domestication refers to the integration of technologies into the family’s routines at home. The research described in this article had two phases: first, during the dissemination of the Magellan laptop, and second, after several profound changes had occurred. Preliminary results of the study, obtained from semistructured interviews with parents and primary school teachers, demonstrate the differential impact of different contexts on the domestication of digital technology in rural communities in Portugal.

Food and Sustainability: An Emerging Subject in Sustainable Environmental Sciences Education Applying to the e-Learning Environment

The global food system makes a significant contribution to climate change, affecting greenhouse gas emissions and other major environmental impacts, along the entire food chain. Individual food consumption is an important part of the production-consumption chain, because consumers make the final choice of the goods and services they consume, and their lifestyles determine how they influence sustainability practices. Simultaneously, there is an increasing concern for the environment issues and an increasing demand for naturalistic icons or organic production, free-range farming and unadulterated processing. This work addresses the imperative to address sustainability in food consumer sciences education, due to the multidisciplinary nature of consumer food studies, by applying online education programmes. The rational for e-learning approach is the fact that, advances in information and communication technologies have had a tremendous impact on the format and on the approaches to teaching and learning.

e-Learning Diversification in Higher Education: Conceptions of Participation

In this chapter, we reflect on the conceptions and different forms of participation in e-Learning contexts in higher education and its influences in climate change literacy. Although the literature review highlights intense research on the value of participation in informal contexts, we argue that the construction of a pedagogical discourse on e-Learning cannot be sustained without the pedagogy of participation. Such participation also acquires new meanings when analysed using socio-constructivist and cultural approaches. In this study, the analysis of participation in e-Learning contexts is based on categories such as leadership, sharing and cohesion. The empirical data we present are the result of more wide-ranging research carried out at the Observatorio da Qualidade da Educacao a Distância e e-Learning (Distance Education and e-Learning Observatory) at the Universidade Aberta, Portugal. Data were collected from the online questionnaire given to a sample of 26 e-Learning course leaders and pedagogical coordinators in face-to-face higher education institutions. The conclusions of the study highlight the different conceptions about the nature of e-Learning processes and practices in higher education, which we believe highlight the need to promote a participation-oriented pedagogy as a fundamental aspect of both climate change literacy/education and online education and based on the construction of both pedagogical innovation and teachers’ education to teach in virtual environments.