News
O Núcleo de Estudantes de Doutoramento do DigiMedia – NEDD já se encontra no website do centro de investigação – https://digimedia.web.ua.pt/nucleo-de-estudantes-de-doutoramento-do-digimedia
Podes encontrar por lá os principais objetivos e a equipa que o constitui.
Para estares a par dos próximos eventos e das informações que vamos partilhando segue a nossa página no Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/nedd.deca e, interage com os restantes membros do DigiMedia através do nosso grupo privado – https://www.facebook.com/groups/1236766580318648
For the first time, a researcher in the field of CTC has achieved the position of career researcher. Mónica Aresta, a researcher at DigiMedia – Digital Media and Interaction Research Center at the University of Aveiro (UA), hopes to “open the way for others who aspire and work every day to have greater security and professional stability”.
This is the first time that DigiMedia has had a career researcher in the area of Communication Sciences and Technologies on its staff. Mónica Aresta stresses that “this position is a first milestone, a moment of special importance for me as a researcher and for all those who work every day – on projects, teaching, publishing and contributing to the advancement of science – so that one day this will be the reality of research in Portugal”.
With a career path articulated between the business and academic contexts, in the last five years her research work has focused mainly on the theme of environmental awareness and sensitization and on how technology, when approached from the perspective of its non-neutral role, can contribute to developing a sense of responsibility regarding the importance of adopting more sustainable behaviors. This theme, which is part of the concerns of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda, is according to the researcher “just one of the fields in which Communication Sciences and Technologies – in their multiplicity of contexts of action – can make a decisive contribution to building dynamic, interactive and immersive experiences that empower individuals to understand the complexities of social and environmental issues and inspire them to become an active part of building a more responsible and sustainable future.”
DigiMedia is an interdisciplinary research unit focused on innovation in the design of new interaction approaches for human-centered digital media applications, rated very good by FCT. With 33 active projects in 2023, with sources of (inter)national public funding and industrial funding, it is a Research Unit with strong links to industry and a strong commitment to knowledge transfer. This position of Career Researcher is therefore, according to the researcher, “the fruit of the work of everyone who has worked since the beginning to recognize this area, often seen as a link between computer sciences and communication sciences, and its affirmation as an active and concrete space for building knowledge. This recognition makes us very proud and once again affirms the University of Aveiro as a leading institution.”
From 4-8 September 2023, the 18th edition of ECTEL – European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning occurred at the Department of Communication and Art, University of Aveiro. Jointly organized by EATEL – European Association of Technology Enhanced Learning and DigiMedia – Digital Media and Interaction Research Centre, this event, held for the first time in Portugal, was attended by a total of around 140 participants from 22 countries.
Under the motto of Responsive and Sustainable Educational Futures, ECTEL 2023 aimed to focus on teaching and learning practices in a post-pandemic education ecosystem. Within a context of new normality, there are many practices and paths being followed which, with the help of digital pedagogical and educational technologies, can support teachers and students. Bringing together participants from countries such as Austria, Estonia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, United States of America, Brazil, Japan, Portugal, Spain, among others, the conference took another step towards technology-supported learning.
Overall, ECTL had 34 paper presentations, 25 posters, 15 demos, a doctoral consortium with 13 presentations, and ten workshops, in a process that involved 551 reviews from 248 reviewers, resulting in an acceptance rate of 27%.
All the information about the conference is available on its website and, until October 4 2023, free of charge, the proceedings that have been published by Springer.
Lastly, at the closing ceremony, it was announced that the 19th edition of ECTEL will take place in Krems, Austria, from 16-20 September 2024.
In an event that aims to recognize the work developed by the teams of the different projects involved in this second edition, the final students@DigiMedia #02 event will take place on July 13 at 15h00, in the CCCI auditorium (DeCA, UA).
The event is integrated in the UA Research Summit, and it’s open to all the academic community. The program will be as follows:
15h00: Opening
Vice-rector for research and Vice-rector for Teaching
DeCA’s direction
DigiMedia Coordination
students@DigiMedia Coordination
15:15: Edition #02 – projects’ presentation
17h00: Preview of students@DigiMedia#03
17h30: Posters presentation and final meeting
students@DigiMedia is an initiative designed with the purpose of fostering students’ participation in scientific research activities.
In this second edition, this event will present the 17 ongoing projects, involving 46 students from all study cycles (CTC area) and 15 DigiMedia researchers.
The session is open to all Academic community!
Helena Reis’s PhD defense takes place on the 4th July, at 2:30 p.m., in Auditório José Grácio, Departamento de Engenharia Mecânica, Universidade de Aveiro, with the topic Avaliação de Jogos Educativos: Proposta de uma Aplicação Digital.
Helena Reis is a student of the PhD programme in Multimedia in Education and her supervisor is Ana Margarida Almeida (DigiMedia, UA).
DigiMedia members are invited to participate in this important moment.
Abstract:
The introduction of games in the classroom is recognized as a strategy that enhances learning and the motivation of the students. School is pointed out as a context of great potential for the implementation of Game-Based Learning strategies. However, the challenges that are presented to educators during the process of choosing a game can lead to premature abandonment of the implementation of the activity. This thesis aimed at to understand, starting from the interactive development of a design of a gamified mobile application, how one can encourage and support the teacher in the application of Game-Based Learning activities. The application, called Games4Class, has as its main purpose to catalog and evaluate educational games. An exploratory study was developed, based on the socio-critical paradigm, and framed in a qualitative investigation, with some quantified parameters. From the point of view of alignment with research objectives, the methodological design was strongly influenced by educational design research approaches; already observing the methodological procedure chosen, we opted for the Case Study. For the study, two cases (two games) were used – Unlove and Carmen Sandiego. The process began with the testing of the evaluation questionnaire of the two educational resources following the implementation of game sessions with professional education students (Study I). The Games Unlove and Carmen Sandiego were evaluated according to three indicators – (i) motivation, (ii) player experience, with the measurement of pragmatic quality and hedonic quality and (iii) learning acquired by the game. From the sessions, the opinion of the teachers involved regarding the use of games in the classroom was also considered. Once these data were collected, a group of eight specialists was created allowing the proposal of the functional requirements of the application, according to the Communicative Design Paradigm (Study II). The requirements were articulated in a design proposal whose mockups explore the cataloguing and evaluation of the two games and enhance communication between user-teachers. To encourage and involve teachers in the use of the application, some gamification elements such as points, digital medals, social interaction, benefits, and challenges were considered in their genesis. The positioning of the gamified proposal, understood as a process of integration of game mechanisms in a non-game context to promote motivation and user participation, was measured through the Octalysis framework. After prototyping, the validation of the proposal was conducted through a usability test, involving, in addition to the group of experts, a national publisher (Study III). At this stage, improvement proposals for the next version of the application were listed. At the same time, the participants in the study, the teachers of the game sessions and the group of experts, positioned themselves in the face of the development of the proposal and the use of Game-Based Learning and enunciated its benefits (Study IV). For the collection of data and to obtain feedback from the participants, individual and focus group semi-structured questionnaires and interviews were applied, and several electronic records gathered. In addition, the usability tests were recorded on video and later transcribed and analyzed. The content analysis technique allowed the encoding of text segments in the various categories and making interpretations. Some conclusions are highlighted. At first, through Study I, it was possible to map and characterize the games Unlove and Carmen Sandiego, the latter being the most scored in the three indicators studied. We conclude that learning was not as effective as that perceived by teachers. Additionally, the design process, initiated in Study II, enabled participatory design by surveying functional requirements. From Study III, it was possible to verify that the design of the application was user-friendly and easily accepted by users. Analyzing the prototype of the Games4Class application in the light of the Octalysis framework, there is a greater relevance of the core Social Influence, contributing to a more intrinsic motivation of the user. The exploration of game-based learning activities and application prototyping elucidated the perceptions of teachers and experts about the positive influence of games on the motivation, behavior, concentration, memorization and learning of students and about the benefits of developing the Games4Class application (Study IV).
No âmbito do Observatório do DigiMedia realizou-se um workshop sobre Power BI – iniciação, no dia 27 de junho, em formato híbrido.
Neste workshop os formandos tiveram oportunidade de adquirir um conjunto de conhecimentos de manipulação, estruturação e visualização de dados usando a solução tecnológica Power BI.
TESTE
Women in tech and feminism are the key topics of the DigiMedia Collection new book. The book launch of Technofeminism: multi and transdisciplinary contemporary views on women in technology, edited by Renata Frade and Mário Vairinhos, DigiMedia researchers, is taking place on Wednesday, May 17th at 4:00 pm, at the CCCI Auditorium of the Departament of Communicatio and Art, University of Aveiro. The event will include a seminar with a round table on the key topics of the book and a coffee break at the end where the book can be explored in different formats. 
The book intends to be a theoretical reference in technofeminism debates and a guide for women, from adolescence onwards, interested in joining or making a professional transition to STEAM careers, entrepreneurship, improving knowledge about feminism in fields of patriarchy greater domain, from a plural and diverse perspective. One of the main book highlights is the participation as author of Dr. Judy Wajcman, recognized worldwide for 30 years for her research on technological feminism and gender studies. The researcher is a British Academy fellow, professor at the Anthony Giddens of Sociology at the London School of Economics. The book is in line with the United Nations General Assembly (UN) Sustainable Development Goals.
Technofeminism: multi and transdisciplinary contemporary views on women in technology authors are: “Feminism and Technology: an interview with Dr. Judy Wajcman by Renata Frade”; “Allegro ma non tropo: how educational traps might be predicted” (Ana Silveira Moura); “Spaces in deconstruction: an experience report on transgender employability in the area of computing/technology” (Biamichelle Miranda, in Memorian); DigitalSELFPresenceLab: embodying new technologies for the restoration of presence” (Carolina Berger); “Gender discrimination in AI models: origins and mitigation paths” (Dora Kaufman); “Convergent feminism, games, digital transition and equity” (Patrícia Gouveia, Luciana Lima); “Cultural Diversity as a design precedent: A (Feminist) Angle for HCI/d Expansion” (Sai Shruthi Chivukula); “How to be a Woman in Science: an interview with Ana Viseu by Renata Frade about Feminism, Gender and Technoscience perspectives”. The preface was written by Dr. Ana Veloso, University of Aveiro Department of Communication and Art Director.
ABOUT THE EDITORS:
RENATA FRADE
Renata Frade develops a women in tech doctoral research at the University of Aveiro/DigiMedia (Portugal). This research is funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT). Her motivation for studies in the technological field was more emphasized 11 years ago, when she became a technology entrepreneur in Brazil. Fifteen years ago, she got to know transmedia theory and was a student of its main theorist, Dr. Henry Jenkins, at M.I.T. (Massachussets Institute of Technology, USA). During 2015 and 2017 she was an activist, speaker and volunteer for the international NGO of women in technology, founded in San Francisco (USA), Girls in Tech Brazil. She´s been invited to be a keynote speaker at technological symposiums, such as Gartner´s (the largest technology research company in the world), feminist events and events for society (such as the Porto Feminist Festival). She´s been writing technology articles for press media such as MobileTime and Digitalk, Mídia Ninja. She is the author of 13 fiction and non-fiction books by Brazilian and international publishers such as Unesp, Rocco, Springer, Patuá, Ria Editorial (Portugal), Livros LabCom.IFP (Univ. da Beira Interior, Portugal). She took UX courses at the California Institute of Arts and USP. She was a Science, Health and Entertainment reporter at InfoGlobo journals. She graduated in Social Communication from PUC-Rio (where she took courses in computing at the Rio DataCentro laboratories), Master in Literature from UERJ. She is an Institute of Advanced Studies Artificial Intelligence researcher at USP.
MÁRIO VAIRINHOS
Professor at the Department of Communication and Arts of the University of Aveiro since 2001, researcher in the area of Interaction Design and Human-Computer Interaction, with particular interest in tangible Media and Mixed Reality. At the same time develops Digital Art work and Museography projects in interaction design. He was co-founder and editor of Mimesis Contemporary Art journal. Graduated in 1996 in Economics from the Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra, in 2001 obtained the Master degree in Digital Arts at the School of Arts of Porto, Portuguese Catholic University. He holds a PhD in Communication Sciences and Technologies from the University of Aveiro and University of Porto.
DIGIMEDIA COLLECTION AND UA EDITORA:
The DigiMedia Collection is a UA Press book collection managed by DigiMedia and focused on the publication of works in the scientific area of Digital Media.
Its goal is to contribute to the deepening of the different theoretical and methodological challenges of this area of knowledge. The DigiMedia Collection publishes books in digital format in four languages: Portuguese, English, Spanish and French.
Further information:
https://digimedia.web.ua.pt/digimedia-collection
https://www.facebook.com/digimediaUA
https://twitter.com/DigiMediaCentre
PRESS CONTACTS:
The Cumulus Network is an important network for the areas of design and media and the Department of Communication and Art/UA is a member of this network. Catarina Lelis, Liliana Costa and Patrícia Oliveira, DigiMedia researchers, participated in the Cumulus Antwerp 2023 International Conference, under the topic Connectivity and Creativity in times of Conflict.
Catarina Lelis was responsible for a workshop entitled Orienting design students in anticipating the impact of their projects and in contributing to the SDGs, which was attended by 25 people.
Liliana Costa presented the project PLAYMUTATION with a presentation entitled Designing for viral infection awareness through PLAYMUTATION in te session ‘Design & digitisation’ .
The two DigiMedia researchers participated in the meetings of three working groups:
- Cumulus working group Women in Design
- Cumulus working group AADTE (Art and Design Teacher Education and Pedagogy)
- Cumulus working group P-R-E Design with IxDA
- Cumulus working group
The participation in the keynote talks, in woorkshops and in several other sessions are worth highlighting:
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Antwerp as a superdiverse majority-minority city: the importance of diverse-sensitive design (keynote talk)
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Natural Intelligence (NI) – Towards Nature Positive Design (keynote talk)
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Creative leadership in innovation in a technology company, how to stay relevant in a faster moving world? (keynote talk)
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The reinventions of craft: A historical view on the usefulness of craftsmanship (keynote talk)
- Design methodology | & digital on urban scale
- Design for and with extended reality
- Care(ful) spaces
- Design Competency Resource (workshop)
- Computational power (workshop)
Patrícia Oliveira presented the project FlavourGame with a Poster entitled “FlavourGame: Interaction design in hybrid games” in the Online Poster Session on Hopin platform moderated by Sven Verheyen.
Other links:
Programme of the conference: https://www.conftool.org/cumulusantwerp2023/sessions.php
News from Playmutation-CUMULUS https://playmutation.web.ua.pt/?p=1975
The ALFAMED network (Red Iberoamericana de Literacia Mediática) has received the 1st Global Media and Information Literacy from UNESCO MIL. At this point, DigiMedia/UA is already part of the network and the contact point in DigiMedia is Jennifer Bueno Rocha (jmbuenor@ua.pt). Other members of DigiMedia can make part of the network.
Under the theme “Pensar o Jornalismo com os Jornalistas. A digitalização dos media”, the University of Aveiro (UA) hosted a meeting on April 14 organized by the Comissão Carteira Profissional de Jornalista (CCPJ), with the support of the Academy of Aveiro, the Aveiro Media Competence Center and Rádio Terranova.
During the session, the issues that currently arise around the “Journalism we have and what Journalism we want” were discussed, as well as the dialogue, reflection and sharing of ideas around current journalism. The role of journalists in contributing to the construction of bases with the purpose of suggesting changes in terms of legislation, behavior and commitment to journalistic activity was also a topic.
Besides the presentation from the Comissão Carteira Profissional de Jornalista (CCPJ), there was a Round Table on the topic on the media turning digital with several guest speakers:
. Dr. João Morais Palmeiro, Director of Aveiro Media Competence Center
. Prof. Nelson Zagalo, Coordinator of DigiMedia – Digital Media and Interaction Research Centre of the University of Aveiro,
. Dr. Licínia Girão, Member of Comissão Carteira Profissional de Jornalista (CCPJ),
. Moderation: Carlos Teixeira, Rádio Terranova
Carla V. Leite, DigiMedia PhD Student, was invited to co-write, with a Researcher in Nursing Sciences, an article for a blog that Researchers/Professors in Health edit/publish, to reach the population in Finland.
The article is about “Citizen engagement in research: Co-creating health”, and it is already published in the following link:
http://terveyttatieteesta.blogspot.com/2023/04/citizen-engagement-in-research-co.html
