Browsing by Author "Lopes, Rui Pedro"
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- 1.º Encontro Internacional de Formação na Docência (INCTE): livro de resumosPublication . Mesquita, Cristina; Pires, Manuel Vara; Lopes, Rui PedroO I Encontro Internacional Formação para a Docência - Desafios e Perspetivas apresenta os seguintes objetivos: – Problematizar, no quadro do processo de Bolonha, as estruturas curriculares da formação de educadores e professores; – Debater propostas didáticas inovadoras no âmbito da formação para a docência; – Refletir sobre as práticas formativas nos diversos contextos; – Analisar o contributo da formação na dinamização das instituições;" – Aprofundar a comunicação entre os diferentes intervenientes na formação numa perspetiva de educação para o desenvolvimento.
- Active learning strategies for hei sustainability: a characterizationPublication . Lopes, Rui Pedro; Mesquita, CristinaHigher Education has been facing several challenges in the last decades. The increase in the number of students, the evolution of technology, globalization, budget restrictions, among others, have been influencing how Higher Education Institutions fulfil their mission and stressing the importance of sustainability. Sustainability is not restricted to resource consumption and use, including also the educational process. Adequate, active, learning strategies have the potential to contribute to the teaching-learning process sustainability, developing the sense of responsibility, the need to respect and be respected, the effort to discuss and get to the best collective decision and the development of the students’ agency. Based on a systematic literature review, this paper focuses on the analysis of the contribution of active learning strategies on the sustainability of organizations, on how active pedagogical approaches can benefit the development of the students’ knowledge. The objective of this work is to identify active pedagogical methodologies and to categorize their use in higher education. In addition, it also aims to recognize their benefits, application contexts and the factors for their effective implementation. Five main databases and index services were used, namely, Scopus, Web of Science, IEEExplore, ACM Digital Library, and Google Scholar, searching for the terms “higher education", “active methodologies” and “active strategies”, from the last 10 years. A total of 139 were retrieved in the initial search. After eliminating repeated, inacceptable and out of scope papers, a total of 48 remained, which were subjected to content analysis. The papers were categorized and analysed, with a final summarization and triangulation to extract the results. From content analysis, a set of categories and sub-categories emerged, including the description of the authors’ concept of the active strategy, the students’ assessment, learning technologies and tools, and the learning outcomes. Most papers are consensual mentioning that active learning stimulates the student to critically think about what he is learning or what he is doing. The most frequent pedagogical methodology reveals a trend around collaborative learning and problem-based learning, with significant mentions of game-based learning, storytelling, participatory action research and other techniques. However, most authors also mention that there is a set of significant challenges in the implementation of the active learning strategies in the organization. Institutional support, professional development, curricula design and the use of supporting technologies are frequently mentioned. Sustainability is a concern that is seldom explicitly mentioned, although the authors reveal that using active technologies contribute to organize the students’ study time and their attitude regarding their role in the learning process. Overall, the contribution of the pedagogical methodologies for the sustainability of HEI has to be carefully planned, in articulation with all the actors, and that can contribute to reimagine the organization as a whole.
- Advertising as a determinant of families and children’s food choicesPublication . Ribeiro, Cristiana; Mesquita, Cristina; Rodrigues, Maria José; Lopes, Rui PedroThe focus of this study is on promoting healthy eating habits and awareness of the influence that advertising has on these choices. Since the second half of the twentieth century, it has been recognized that the eating habits of the entire population have changed. In particular, food includes foods with a higher sugar, fat and salt content. Several factors have influenced this change, among which are the media, the power fast-food type and more sedentary lifestyles. These dietary habits associated with the sedentary lifestyle have caused the increase of the obesity of the children. This problem has received the attention of several entities, among them World Health Organization (WHO). Considering that school plays a fundamental role, helping children to be aware on the marketing and advertising influence, and consequently contributing to the inhibition of harmful eating habits, this study seeks to understand what educational strategies and practices could contribute to the creation of healthier eating habits of children and their families. In this context, the main objective of this study is to understand the influence of the media on the dietary choices of children and their families and to analyse later the impact of educational strategies promoting healthy eating habits in children's awareness. This study was carried out with three groups of children one of the day-care centres with 2 years old, other of preschool education with 5 years old, and another group with children with 6 and 7 years old attending the 1st year primary education. Considering the nature of this study a mixed quantitative and qualitative perspectives were used. The quantitative data were collected from a questionnaire applied to the parents and analysed statistically. Qualitative data were collected using direct and participant observation, field notes recorded in the course of action and children's productions. All these data were submitted to content analysis, to better understand the phenomenon under study. There are several similarities with action research, since it seeks to understand the school and family contexts and implement actions in order to about it, although it does not observe cycles of investigation, because of the short time-horizon in which it was developed. The interpretation was performed through triangulation of the data. The results reveal that there is a set of foods that children's choices but not always that choices are healthy. It is observed that the children are influenced by the media, since, among the most preferred foods appears on media publicity. Another conclusion is that most of the media advertised food are rich in sugar, grease and salt. It turns out that many parents or other caregivers do not recognize such influence, either in themselves or in children. The experiences of learning, the discussion and the reflection have helped children to become more aware of the effects of advertising on their food’s options and on the importance of making the best choices in their diet.
- Advertising as a determinant of families and children`s food choicesPublication . Ribeiro, Cristiana; Mesquita, Cristina; Rodrigues, Maria José; Lopes, Rui PedroThe focus of this study is on promoting healthy eating habits and awareness of the influence that advertising has on these choices. Since the second half of the twentieth century, it has been recognized that the eating habits of the entire population have changed. In particular, food includes foods with a higher sugar, fat and salt content. Several factors have influenced this change, among which are the media, the power fast-food type and more sedentary lifestyles. These dietary habits associated with the sedentary lifestyle have caused the increase of the obesity of the children. This problem has received the attention of several entities, among them World Health Organization (WHO). Considering that school plays a fundamental role, helping children to be aware on the marketing and advertising influence, and consequently contributing to the inhibition of harmful eating habits, this study seeks to understand what educational strategies and practices could contribute to the creation of healthier eating habits of children and their families. In this context, the main objective of this study is to understand the influence of the media on the dietary choices of children and their families and to analyse later the impact of educational strategies promoting healthy eating habits in children's awareness. This study was carried out with three groups of children one of the day-care centres with 2 years old, other of preschool education with 5 years old, and another group with children with 6 and 7 years old attending the 1st year primary education. Considering the nature of this study a mixed quantitative and qualitative perspectives were used. The quantitative data were collected from a questionnaire applied to the parents and analysed statistically. Qualitative data were collected using direct and participant observation, field notes recorded in the course of action and children's productions. All these data were submitted to content analysis, to better understand the phenomenon under study. There are several similarities with action research, since it seeks to understand the school and family contexts and implement actions in order to about it, although it does not observe cycles of investigation, because of the short time-horizon in which it was developed. The interpretation was performed through triangulation of the data. The results reveal that there is a set of foods that children's choices but not always that choices are healthy. It is observed that the children are influenced by the media, since, among the most preferred foods appears on media publicity. Another conclusion is that most of the media advertised food are rich in sugar, grease and salt. It turns out that many parents or other caregivers do not recognize such influence, either in themselves or in children. The experiences of learning, the discussion and the reflection have helped children to become more aware of the effects of advertising on their food’s options and on the importance of making the best choices in their diet.
- AgentAPI: an API for the development of managed agentsPublication . Lopes, Rui Pedro; Oliveira, José LuísManaged agents, namely SNMP agents, costs too much to develop, test and maintain. Although assuming simplicity since its origins, the SNMP model has several intrinsic aspects that make the development of management applications a complex task. However, there are tools available which intend to simplify this process by generating automatic code based on the management information definition. Unfortunately, these tools are usually complicated to use and require a strong background of programming experience and network management knowledge. This paper describes an API for managed agent development which also provides multiprotocol capabilities. Without changing the code, the resulting agent can be managed by SNMP, web browsers, wap browsers, CORBA or any other access method either simultaneously or individually.
- An approach to self management based on automatic diagnosticsPublication . Lopes, Rui Pedro; Oliveira, José LuísManagement operations imply, most of the time, the implementation of prevention policies in order to avoid faults and to provide expeditious answers to those faults. This paper present an architecture that allows to infer about network symptoms and to correlate these with well-known anomalies in order to provide the adequate diagnostic that will drive to the fault repair.
- An architecture for capturing and synchronizing heart rate and body motion for stress inferencePublication . Lopes, Júlio Castro; Vieira, João; Van-Deste, Isaac; Lopes, Rui PedroThis paper aims to propose a system for capturing and synchronizing human heart rate (HR) and body motion (BMR) for stress inference. For this purpose, OpenPose skeletonbased method was used, which is capable of analyzing sequential videos, processing them frame by frame, and obtaining an approximation to the human figure composed of 18 key points, roughly corresponding to the joints. It is expected that by combining these two distinct measurements, HR and BMR, a more grounded evaluation of player stress levels while playing a Virtual Reality (VR) game, will be achieved. The experiment was conducted with 5 participants playing 5 different types of games, with different levels of intensity. During the game, the players wore a smartwatch to measure the HR and images were captured to calculate the BMR. Future work will assess this dataset to confirm the stress level in these 5 situations.
- An architecture for reliable transportation of delicate goodsPublication . Matos, Paulo; Rufino, José; Lopes, Rui PedroAdequate conditions are critical to avoiding damage or degradation of products during transportation, especially in the case of delicate goods like food products, live animals, precision machinery or art items, among others. The damages are not always readily identified: sometimes they are only detected several days or weeks after the merchandise has been delivered. Moreover, it may be hard to assess if the problems resulted from the transport conditions, and it may be even harder to prove it, making it difficult to determine and assign responsibilities. Also, transport is a global business, typically involving different companies and means (truck, train, plane, ship, …). Usually, customers hire the service to a single commercial entity, but the service is performed by several companies, like transporters, stockists and dispatchers. To know whether the transport requirements are fulfilled or not is thus essential to assessing responsibilities and encouraging compliance by all the players in the process. In this paper, the authors propose an architecture that allows certifying, in an exempt manner, the conditions under which the transport of sensitive goods are carried out. In case of compliance, it protects the entities of the transport chain and ensures the customer that the merchandise has not been subject to conditions that may have affected its integrity or quality. If problems are detected, it allows to identify the non‐compliant players and to assign responsibilities. The solution is based on ultra‐low‐power, low‐cost devices (equipped with several sensors, a real‐time clock, and Bluetooth Low Energy services), a mobile application and several cloud services (including a Coordinated Universal Time service)
- An architecture for sharing cyberiIntelligence based on blockchainPublication . Gonçalo, Rui; Pedrosa, Tiago; Lopes, Rui PedroCyber-intelligence sharing can leverage the development and deployment of security plans and teams within organizations, making infrastructures resilient and resistant to cyberattacks. To be efficient, information sharing should be performed in a trusted environment, ensuring both the integrity, privacy and confidentiality and the truthfulness and usefulness of the information. This paper addresses this issue with the development and deployment of an architecture based on blockchain technology. Each participant is granted a reputation level, that is used to assess and verify the information other actors produce. Each actor, then, is given an amount of credit, corresponding to the number and accuracy of the validation. Information is also organized in topics, instantiated in independent ledgers. The architecture was validated with a three organization scenario, for proof-of-concept.
- An award system for gamification in higher educationPublication . Lopes, Rui PedroHigher Education Institutions (HEI) have the missions of education, at a high level, research and cooperation. Regarding education, HEI must create an appropriate environment for learning, towards high-level academic performance. The conciliation of education and research paves the way for an adequate learning environment, further reinforced by the students' motivation. Motivation depends on several factors, some of them external, such as earning money, gaining social status, have a higher grade, and/or internal (intrinsic), which results from the person's core self (associated to the satisfaction people feel when doing something appealing). This paper describes the approach to applying gamification to a higher education subject in the course of computer science. It uses several game design mechanisms, such as adaptive challenges, rewards, curiosity and chance to increase the time students spend working, experiencing and learning in a HEI. The sections in the subject's curriculum are transformed into levels, awarding stars for increasingly complex achievements. Grades depend on the learning experiences students' choose, as well as on the time spent solving the challenges presented to them. There is also the concept of soft currency, which we call BitPoints, that can be used to increase the student autonomy and reduce the workload. An online platform is constantly available to inform the student about his or her progress within the subject as well as the grade at the moment of the access. Each level is represented by a castle on a map, which is considered conquered as soon as the student solves the required challenges. Depending on the difficulty of the challenges faced, the student can face a lower grade or a higher grade. Only after finishing all the levels, the student is able to successfully finish the subject. Virtual money can be spent in a virtual shop, where the student can invest in tools that can help solving some tasks. The virtual shop provides scripts, instructions and other techniques that can be valuable to students. A chance factor is also considered in the shop, giving further motivation to students. In the preliminary assessment of the process, students demonstrate willingness to compete not only to pursue the highest grade but also on the amount of collected BitPoints and on the speed to complete a level. Moreover, students frequently come back to previous levels and learning experiences, to further test the acquired skills.