Educational Technologies
U.Porto is a pioneer in introducing an online component to support face-to-face teaching in the Portuguese higher education panorama.
Educational Technologies
In 1998, it set up an office to support non-face-to-face teaching and learning.
In 2003, the Support Office for New Technologies in Education (GATIUP) was created as part of the mission of the now defunct Institute of Resources and Common Initiatives of the University of Porto.
That year saw the start of the E-learning@UP pilot project, with the aim of enabling teachers to systematically and sustainably develop teaching content from a blended-learning perspective.
The aim was for lecturers to make teaching content available online on the university's e-learning platforms, encouraging the use of electronic resources in their teaching practice. The aim was also to expand the university's repository of online resources and to assess the impact of e-learning on improving the quality of teaching.
During its five-year duration (2003-2008), under the coordination of GATIUP, the E-learning@UP project boosted the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), particularly the Internet, in the teaching and learning process by creating an online component to support face-to-face classes.
The project was developed in six phases:
1) raising awareness of the project in all the Faculties of U.Porto;
2) selection of curricular units (UC);
3) development of an online component for each UC selected;
4) implementation with students;
5) evaluation;
6) dissemination.
Transversal to the process was the training and personalised support offered to teachers, who were free to choose between e-learning platforms and always received the necessary support in developing and placing materials online. The following platforms were used and tested: LUVIT, WebCT Campus Edition, WebCT VISTA and Moodle.
This process made it possible to acquire a critical view of the tools for making content available and creating it, communication, interaction and evaluation of each of the e-learning platforms used during this period of time. It was on the basis of this consolidated knowledge that it was subsequently decided, in a reliable and validated way, based on real data of use by the academic community, which e-learning platform would become official at U.Porto.
In the five years that the E-learning@UP project has been running, there has been a lot of institutional support, especially for the 2003-2004 edition, supported by the Knowledge Society Operational Programme (POS_Conhecimento), and the 2004-2005 edition, supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
After the success of the pilot edition, there was an exponential increase in the participation of new teachers in the project and content of a high scientific, technical and pedagogical standard was developed.
This Educational Technologies centre, now part of the Educational Innovation unit, has always continued to focus its work on technical and pedagogical support for U.Porto teachers who integrate technologies into their teaching practices, both in face-to-face training and distance learning, as well as developing instructional design and audiovisual and multimedia production in b-learning, e-learning and MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) courses.
Pedagogical Innovation
In 2015, in close collaboration with the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, the Teaching and Learning Improvement Unit was set up at U.Porto, with the aim of expanding teachers' pedagogical knowledge and skills.
With a view to improving educational models, it promoted training courses, creating spaces for meeting, sharing and personal development, with a regular offer of courses aimed at all U.Porto teachers, in person and at a distance, in e-learning and blended-learning modalities, synchronously and asynchronously.
Articulated with the Pedagogical Councils, which indicated the needs felt by the teachers in each OU, the training offer was organised into four areas:
1) new pedagogical approaches;
2) educational technologies;
3) personal competences;
4) assessment methods.
Also in 2015, this unit was renamed the Pedagogical Innovation Centre (NIP), and its mission is to improve the educational offer from an innovative and creative perspective. The dissemination of reflection and sharing of pedagogical practices adapted to the contemporary world has contributed to the national and international recognition of U.Porto as a benchmark institution in the field of education.
The NIP's activities include: training and pedagogical updating for teachers, participation in international projects in the area of pedagogical innovation, organising regular events to share pedagogical practices and awarding institutional prizes for innovative and creative educational practices.
The following activities are worth highlighting.
- 2015 [February]: 3rd Annual U.Porto Pedagogical Innovation and Sharing Workshop, a space for sharing innovative pedagogical experiences at U.Porto.
- 2015: creation of the Pedagogical Excellence award, to distinguish, promote and publicise educational models of excellence at U.Porto, in response to pedagogical challenges, with an emphasis on coordinated teaching, learning and assessment processes, as well as active student learning. It also valued the integration of scientific development and the use of educational technologies. This award ran until 2019
- 2015 [May]: intensive training week during the academic week and a diverse range of monthly training sessions throughout the school year.
- 2015 [May]: launch of the Higher Education - Academic Success project, supported by the Secretary of State for Higher Education, with the aim of welcoming, integrating and empowering each 1st year student. U.Porto coordinated this project in collaboration with 11 higher education institutions (UBI, UM, UC, UL, UMINHO, UNL, UTAD and ISCTE-IUL, IPP, IPL and IPC).
- 2015: creation of the Botanical Café e-learning programme, with the aim of creating a community of students to share strategies and possible difficulties faced by 1st year students.
- 2015: Academic Success project (Capturing, Knowing, Proposing, Listening) with a special focus on students who arrive later at U.Porto, in a welcoming and integration programme for this group of students, to combat underachievement and dropping out of higher education. This initiative favoured: training and integration of first-year students, through events across all OUs to publicise the structure and functioning of U.Porto and the different services they can use throughout their academic career. At the same time, each OU organised scientific, social and sporting activities. The dissemination and training sessions took place in informal spaces, the e-learning cafés. The offer of actions and activities was based on the responses to surveys carried out individually with each student who showed a desire to drop out of the course.
- 2016: in-depth work to reformulate the University of Porto's Pedagogical Surveys (IPUP), after reflection by the CCMEUP team, based on the document Construction and Validation of the University of Porto's Pedagogical Survey. Since the 2016-2017 academic year, the NIP has published the IPUP completion rate by OU on its website.
- 2016: launch of the Pedagogical Innovation Projects award, a competition to fund projects underway in a Curricular Unit of U.Porto's training offer. It should show the advantages of applying new pedagogical strategies.
- 2017: joining the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education's initiative Estudar mais é preciso, with the aim of strengthening the perception of young people's training and qualification needs.
- 2017: joining the Don't give up on yourself campaign, promoted by the Secretary of State for Science, Technology and Higher Education, the Ministry of Education, in partnership with the Portuguese Association for the Development of Communications (APDC), with the aim of highlighting the importance of lifelong learning and knowledge and combating school dropout.
- 2017 [December]: publication of a newsletter specially dedicated to disseminating innovative teaching practices inside and outside U.Porto, nurturing and strengthening relations between NIP and higher education teachers by publicising training, seminars, workshops, conferences, articles and other interesting activities.
- 2017: launch of the UC InovPed award, a competition to fund new curricular units to promote student-centred educational models with active learning methodologies.
- 2020: publication of the 1st volume of the Pedagogical Innovation Notebooks, making accessible a set of reflections, experience reports, pedagogical improvement projects, methodological proposals and more theoretical texts, expanding the impact of pedagogical innovation in university teaching.