University of Aveiro - Department of Communication and Art
Contact person: Fernando Ramos
fernando.ramos [at] ua.pt
Professor at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, since 1982. Full Professor at the Department of Art and Communication since 2003. Main research interests: Communication Technologies and Society, eLearning, Distance Education, International Cooperation for Development.
Holds a degree on Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering (1979), a PhD in Electrotechnical Engineering/Telecommunications (1992) and the Aggregate title in Communication and Art/Multimedia Communication (2001) all from the University of Aveiro.
Former Scientific Coordinator of CETAC.MEDIA, the Centre for the Study of Communication Sciences and Technologies, a joint research centre of the Universities of Aveiro and Porto (2008-2012).
Former Chairman of the Board of UNAVE, the interface of the University of Aveiro for vocational training and continuous education (2004-2014).
Former Director of CEMED-Multimedia and Distance Education Centre of the University of Aveiro and institutional leader for the promotion of eLearning and distance education methodologies and technologies (1999-2010).
Former Director of the Electronics and Telecommunication Dept (1994-1999) and of the Communication and Art Dept (2001-2005) of the University of Aveiro.
Author/co-author of more than 200 scientific and technical papers, mainly, for the last 15 years, in the fields of Digital Media in Education and Distance Education. Co-author/organizer of 5 scientific books.
Former Director of the PhD program on Information and Communication in Digital Platforms (2008-2014), a joint program of the Universities of Aveiro and Porto. Vice-Director of the PhD on Multimedia in Education of the University of Aveiro (2008-2014).
Supervisor of 9 PhD and over 30 MSc students. Chairman of the organizing committee of several national and international conferences, including eLES’04, the first eLearning in Higher Education conference organized in Portugal (2004).
Consultant in the areas of Communication Technologies, eLearning, Distance Education for international and national organisations: EU Commission, EACEA-European agency for Culture, Education and Audiovisual, BAD-African Development Bank, Portuguese Ministries of Economy and Industry, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, University of Cape Verde, University Eduardo Mondlane (Mozambique), University Agostinho Neto (Angola), National University of East Timor, Botho University (Botswana) and INED-The National Distance Education Institute (Mozambique).
Description of the smart city learning group operating in the affiliated institution
The research group at University of Aveiro, Portugal, has currently 5 PhD members (including coordinator) that have interests in SCL topics and belong to CETAC.MEDIA a joint research centre of the Communication and Art Department at University of Aveiro (CAD_UA) and of the University of Porto (UP), in Communication and Information Sciences and Technologies (CIST). The members are also engaged in teaching activities in the CIST field in all the under-graduate and pos-graduate programmes coordinated by members of the group's research unit.
João Batista holds a PhD in Information and Communication in Digital Platforms related with the use of communication technologies in the Portuguese higher education institutions.
Luís Pedro is an assistant professor at the CAD_UA with a PhD on Educational Technology. His research interests are related with social media development and integration in educational and training contexts. His personal web page can be found at: http://about.me/lpedro
Óscar Mealha is associate professor with tenure at the CAD_UA, with research on design and analysis of Human-Computer Interaction and has also proposed novel methods/techniques related to usability evaluation and information visualization as assessment and mediation tools.
Rui Raposo is assistant professor at the CAD_UA. Holds a PhD in CST and a bachelor degree in NCT both from the CAD_UA. Develops research focused on communication mediated through technology in contexts linked with museology and tourism.
Competences
- ICT supported learning and distance learning
- Social media development, integration and assessment in educational and training contexts
- Design and analysis of technology mediated infocommunicational environments
- Mapping the relevance of cultural landscapes and their inherent assets in the construction of inclusive and progressive reflective societies
- Design and implementation of projects concerned with team communication, project outcomes dissemination, sustainability and transferability
- Design and implementation of social media communication strategies for disseminating ongoing project activities, building online reputation
Relevant achievements, best practices, products
FCT funded project TRACER - Use of Communication Technologies in Portuguese Public Higher Education, which main outcome was the U-TRACER platform
HEION project - Higher Education Institutions Online for ECTS - EACEA-527937-LLP-1-2012-1-PT-ERASMUS-EAM
Joint FCT and PT Communications/SAPO funded “Shared Personal learning Environments” project
PT Communications/SAPO funded project SAPO Campus
Several international cooperation projects (Mozambique, Cape Verde, East-Timor) in the areas of ICT supported learning/distance education and institutional capacity building
- Coordination of several pos-graduate programmes at CAD_UA:
i) Doctoral Program on Multimedia in Education (joint program with Education Dep. Univ. of Aveiro)
ii) Doctoral Program on Information and Communication in Digital Platforms (joint program with University of Oporto)
iii) Master's Program on Multimedia Communication
- Mobile App development (e.g. prototype of the “Parking goes Mobile” and “I’m here and…” projects)
On going challenges
Some of the relevant challenges in the group are driven by educational topics in diverse contexts, namely in HEI:
i) The use of Communication Technologies in Higher Education Institutions;
ii) Comunication technologies and the promotion of Peer-learning;
iii) Comunication technologies and the promotion of Peer-assessment;
iv) Digital badges;
v) Institutional perspective of using MOOCs and
vi) Development and Management of MOOCs
Other challenges relate with:
i) Parking goes mobile: app development to assist drivers
ii) Visualization of Open Data
Concerning the correlation of communication technologies and the tourist expectations and augmented experiences, this work originated two fundamental concepts: i) the construction of cultural landscapes through collaborative online cultural mapping; ii) and, the role of communication technologies within the activities undertaken during the before, during and after phases of the tourism and museum experience cycle. These challenges, due to their transdisciplinary nature, may easily derive to other challenges for much of what is being done is highly transferable to other contexts from a geographical, thematic or scientific point of view.
Relevant publications
• Ramos, F., Pinto, M., Coelho, D., Raposo, R., Pombo, L., Pedro, L., Almeida, P., Batista, J., Morais, N., Souza, F., Balula, A., Lucas, M., Moreira, A. Tracing the use of Communication Technologies in Higher Education. Higher Education and Contemporary Challenges. Ed. IGI Global. (accepted, in press).
• Ramos, F., Pinto, M., Coelho, D., Raposo, R., Almeida, P., Pedro, L., Batista, J. The use of communication technologies to support teaching and learning practices in Portuguese Higher Education. Proceedings of INTED 2014 Conference, 10th-12th March 2014, Valencia, Spain, pp. 6399-6407.
• Batista, J, e Ramos, F. (2012) A Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of the Use of Advanced Communication Technologies in Higher Education. Proceedings of the 12th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT’2012), Roma, Itália, ISBN 978-1-4673-1642-2, pp. 5-7
• PEDRO, L., SANTOS, C. ALMEIDA, S., RAMOS, F., MOREIRA, A., ALMEIDA, M., ANTUNES, M.J. (2014). The SAPO Campus recommender system: a study about students’ and teachers’ opinions. Research in Learning Technology 2014, 22: 22921 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v22.22921.
• ARESTA, M., PEDRO, L., SANTOS, C., MOREIRA, A. (2014). Social Networks and the Construction of Identity in Digital Environments. Journal of Mobile Multimedia, 10(3 & 4), 194-205.
• Petiz, S., Ramos, F., Roseiro, P. The Use of ICT In Organizational Learning Practices: A Mixed Methods Study In A Portuguese Organization. ICERI2013-6th International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation, Sevilha, Spain, November, 18-20 2013.
• Roque, V., Raposo, R., (2013). Social Media as a Communication and Marketing Tool: An Analysis of Online Activities from International Key Player DMO. Em: Marketing Places and Spaces: Shifting tourist flows, 5th ATMC Conference Proceeings, Faculty of Economics – University of Algarve, Vilamoura, 2 a 4 de Outubro, Algarve, 247-265
•Raposo, R., P. Beça, C. Figueiredo, Santos, H., (2012). Mesh-t: an on-going project on ubiquitous and context-aware technologies in tourism. e-Review of Tourism Research (eRTR), Vol. 10, No. 2, 72-75. http://ertr.tamu.edu/files/2012/11/eRTR_SI_v10i2_Raposo_Beça_Figueiredo_Santos_72-75.pdf
• Pinto, M., Raposo, R., Ramos, F. Comparison of Emerging Information Visualization tools for Higher Education. IV 2012-16th International Conference Information Visualisation, LIRMM CNRS Univ. Montpellier II, Montpellier, France, July 10-13, 2012.
• Oliveira, A. P., Mealha, O., & Santos, C. (2010). Visualisation of web based e-Learning activity. In C. S. IEEE (Ed.), 14th International Conference Information Visualisation - IV 2010 (pp. 219–224). London, UK. Retrieved from http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5571285&tag=1