Tiago Carvalho’s online PhD defense takes place on the 26th May, at 03:00 p.m., with the topic “Matriz para mapeamento do potencial educativo de conteúdos audiovisuais na aprendizagem do inglês”.

Tiago Carvalho is a student of the PhD programme in Multimedia in Education and his supervisors are Ana Balula (CIDTFF, ESTGA, UA) and Pedro Almeida (DeCA, UA).

DigiMedia members are invited to  participate in this important moment.

All instructions are available in the following link: https://www.ua.pt/pt/noticias/10/63255

Abstract:

E se, hipoteticamente, houvesse uma app de telemóvel onde aprendentes de inglês pudessem procurar e consumir vídeos que estivessem de acordo com o seu nível linguístico, com as suas necessidades educativas, e com os contextos comunicativos em que se inserem? E se os professores de inglês pudessem, nessa mesma app procurar por vídeos que se adequassem aos seus alunos, ou aos seus grupos? Vídeos esses que tivessem sido previamente catalogados, validados pela sua qualidade, e partilhados por centenas de outros alunos e professores. Teria esta app o potencial de mudar comportamentos de busca, consumo, e partilha de vídeos por esta comunidade?

A presente tese questionou a relevância e o potencial de uma app como a descrita, partindo, assim para a descrição da conceção, e do processo de desenvolvimento e teste de um protótipo de uma aplicação móvel direcionada a aprendentes de English for Specific Purposes / Business English e a professores de Inglês Língua Estrangeira. Trata-se de um protótipo de uma plataforma colaborativa online que permite a partilha e mapeamento de conteúdo audiovisual. Este mapeamento também permite a pesquisa de conteúdo na mesma plataforma, para utilização em sala de aula ou para consumo em contextos informais.

Neste trabalho, descreve-se: i. como foram isoladas as vareáveis para construir a matriz que sustenta as tarefas de mapeamento e pesquisa, ii. como essa Matriz foi incorporada num Google© Form para ser testada por um painel de peritos, iii. como foi construído o protótipo de alta-fidelidade, e iv. como esse protótipo foi testado e avaliado por uma amostra de utilizadores-alvo.

A metodologia aplicada neste projeto foi Development-Research e foram delineadas quatro fases distintas: 1. Construção da Matriz – através de um estudo exploratório da literatura e de plataformas e software de aprendizagem de línguas; 2. Validação da matriz por parte de um painel de peritos; 3. Incorporação da matriz num protótipo – utilizando ferramentas de prototipagem disponíveis gratuitamente online; 4. Uso experimental do protótipo por utilizadores-alvo. Com os dados recolhidos na fase 4 foi possível avaliar o potencial de implementação desta plataforma.

Os resultados do teste do protótipo mostram que, ao nível comportamental, este tipo de plataforma tem potencial para mudar os hábitos de pesquisa de conteúdo audiovisual por parte de ambos os grupos de utilizadores; ao nível das tarefas, estas são intuitivas e de simples execução; ao nível conceptual, a plataforma foi validada enquanto instrumento de auxílio ao processo de ensino e de aprendizagem e as funções de interação social foram igualmente validadas. Ainda assim, concluiu-se que as funções de gamificação pensadas necessitam de uma revisão.

Em síntese, uma plataforma desta natureza parece ser um instrumento de utilidade a outros ramos do ensino do inglês (como o General English), que pode gerar o desenvolvimento de mecanismos de inteligência artificial para mapeamento automático de conteúdo audiovisual, e o racional subjacente pode ser transferido para outras línguas estrangeiras.

The National Center for Quality Assurance & Accreditation of Educational & Training Institutes, at the Libyan Education Ministry, approved the didactic plan of the Cross-Media Journalism Master Program, in the framework of the Erasmus+ project PAgES – Post-crisis Journalism in Post-crisis Libya. Vania Baldi, member of DigiMedia, takes part in the research team of the project.

The project, co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union, is coordinated by IULM University, and it involves the four universities of Tripoli, Sirte, Misurata and Zawia, alongside with the University of Aveiro (Digital Media and Interaction Research Center), University of Granada and UNIMED.

The educational plan of the Master is the result of a 12-month common elaboration, based on both the bottom-up level of needs analysis and the top-down level of examination of international best practices. The collaboration among Libyan and European universities guarantees for an advanced and innovative educational program, while the implementation of Bologna Process rules and 120 ECTS system will offer students an ideal opportunity for accessing the global job market.

The Master will be offered in the four Libyan universities of Tripoli, Sirte, Zawia and Misurata, and it will start in September 2020. Students will also be offered the opportunity of a two-week study visit at Sapienza University in Rome and IULM University, Milan. Information about students’ enrollment will be made available in the next months.

More information on the project can be consulted at: https://pages-project.ly/

The team from the University of Aveiro of the Erasmus+ Mind Safety – Safety Matters II project has just published the ‘Teacher´s Guide on Occupational Safety and Health Education – Exploring’ OSH! What a Bright Idea! ” aimed at national and European Teachers and Trainers (https://www.ua.pt/pt/noticias/11/62548). Ana Margarida Almeida and Luis Pedro are part of the research team of the project and authors of this publication.

This Guide is a tool to support the work of teachers from Basic and Secondary Education and also of trainers in the area of Education for Occupational Safety and Health.

The publication presents suggestions for exploring the educational digital resource ‘OSH! What a bright idea!’ (http://osh.act.gov.pt/), offering varied opportunities for interdisciplinary curricular insertion and including different educational approaches such as interdisciplinarity, project-based learning, active learning, multimodality, the use of technologies and valuing inclusion and accessibility.

The ‘Teacher´s Guide on Occupational Safety and Health Education – Exploring ‘OSH! What a Bright Idea!” (2020) is available for download at http://hdl.handle.net/10773/27546.

The Mind Safety – Safety Matters II project (2018-1-PT01-KA201 – 047416) seeks to improve and innovate in the methods of teaching health and safety topics in the classroom, motivating and preparing young people to work in safe conditions and to be responsible citizens after leaving school.

More about the Mind Safety – Safety Matters II project: http://mindsafety.web.ua.pt/.

Helena Reis (PhD Student) and Margarida Almeida (Supervisor) were distinguished with the Best Poster Award, within the 11thInternational Conference on Videogame Sciences and Arts – Videojogos 2019, that took place at the University of Aveiro, between 27th and 29th November (http://videojogos2019.web.ua.pt/).

DigiMedia’s doctoral students Ana Raquel Cabral and Liliana Gonçalves were awarded with the prize of ‘Best Pitch in Research Summit’ for their doctoral researches in Multimedia in Education and Information and Communication in Digital Platforms respectively.

On July 3rd, the event Research Summit 2019 took place at the University of Aveiro with the purpose of encouraging the exchange of knowledge and the presentation of the best research projects in different areas and research units. Many researchers and other entities of the academic community joined together in order to establish partnerships, celebrate research results and advance the state of the art in different topics. Prof. Ana Margarida Almeida was a keynote speaker and represented DigiMedia in the domain of eHealth with the talk ‘Driving innovation, enabling quality of life, research on eHealth and wellbeing at Digimedia’.

Ana Raquel Cabral and Liliana Gonçalves, both PhD students at DigiMedia, were awarded with the Best Pitch for the doctoral programs in Multimedia in Education (MEdu) and Information and Communication in Digital Platforms (ICPD). Their pitches entitled “Peer learning and its impact on peer teacher students’ academic performance – proposal of a procedure model” (presented by Ana Cabral, supervised by Prof. Carlos Santos) and “Sharing knowledge through digital platforms to socio-territorial well-being: the forest fires’ case” (presented by Liliana Gonçalves, supervised by Prof. Lídia Oliveira) were distinguished by their scientific quality, structure and organization of the presented work.

On the 2017/2018 FCT R&D Units Evaluation, DigiMedia was evaluated by the Digital Services panel and our result (VERY GOOD) was one of the two best in this panel, who scored Digimedia as follows:

• Work and results from the past 5 years – 5/5
• Quality of the research team – 4/5
• Research plan for the future – 4/5

The report about our research centre provides very useful comments and recommendations we are going to take in very good care.
Further info about the evaluation of all the Portuguese research units can be found at https://www.fct.pt/apoios/unidades/avaliacoes/2017/resultados.phtml.pt.

Prof. Fernando Ramos, coordinator of the work package 3 in the CeNTER research project (Community-led Networks for Territorial Innovation), participated as an invited external expert at the International Workshop on Smart Technologies for the City: EU, Russia and the countries of Central Asia cases, organized by the CoHuSC-Co-creation of Human Smart Cities project co-financed by the European Commission/Erasmus + Jean Monnet Program, held at the Tomsk Polytechnic University (UPT), Tomsk, Russia, from 25 to 27 April 2019.

On April 25, Prof. Fernando Ramos presented an invited talk entitled Designing a Digital Platform to foster Territorial Innovation at the Tomsk Polytechnic University (UPT). Being an invited speaker at a meeting with UPT post graduate students, university that integrates the small group of research universities in Russia, Prof. Ramos discussed the concept of the digitally-mediated platform that addresses territorially-based innovation, which is being developed under the CENTER research project.

On the second day of the International Workshop, his participation included panel discussions on territorially-based innovation experiences supported by digital media in Europe, Central Asia and Russia, in which the initiatives that were undertaken by the CeNTER program were shared and highlighted. Other interventions focused on ongoing research in various Russian territories (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tomsk and Novasibirsk) and in the capital of Kazakhstan (Sultanor, formerly Astana).

Finally, on April 27, Prof. Fernando Ramos participated in a meeting with citizens from Tomsk (young students, adults and seniors), during which community problems and needs were discussed, as well as participatory co-creation of solutions based on their active engagement within the city.

At the invitation of the European Commission’s Active and Assisted Living programme, Paula Alexandra Silva conducted an interactive workshop entitled “Designing for communities, with communities”. This workshop was supported in the Work Package 3 of CeNTER Project.
The workshop was held in Brussels on 12 of March and involved around 20 European project coordinators funded by the AAL program.
In addition to other activities, participants developed skills in user understanding and rapid prototyping.

A group of Master’s students in Multimedia Communication (MCMM) at the Department of Communication and Art (DeCA) University of Aveiro, were awarded with the prize “Hack for Good”, promoted by Fundação Gulbenkian. “Kind” is the name of the chatbot created by these students during the 48h non-stop event PixelCamp that was hosted by Bright Pixel on March  21-23, in Lisbon.

Last Wednesday was the first day of PixelCamp, a 48 non-stop event that challenged the creativity and innovation of many tech enthusiasts, students and entrepreneurs. Six Master’s students and ex-student in Multimedia Communication – António Santos, Bruno Gameiro, Francisco Regalado, Henrique Silva, Vasco Silva, Pedro Leite, and  Sónia Machado, jointly with professor and researcher in DigiMedia, Carlos Santos, presented the chatbot Kind, whose purpose was to prevent cyberbullying in youngsters.

Being Cyberbullying of the utmost importance in society given its impact on the emotional state and unpredictability of human behaviour in virtual environments, the chatbot Kind aims to mediate the messages that are exchanged by different users and discourage messages that are susceptible of bullying. The project ‘Kind’ is available on [1].

Mónica Aresta and Alcina Prata recently joined Digimedia as integrated PhD members.
Currently, Mónica Aresta is a PhD researcher in the FCT funded project “Gamers4Nature” and integrates the Games and Transmedia research group. Alcina Prata is an Adjunct Professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal and integrates the Social iTV research group.

DigiMedia welcomes these new members wishing them the best success!