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- Learning management systems in higher educationPublication . Lopes, Ana PaulaThe use of Laptops and the Internet has produced the technological conditions for instructors and students can take advantage from the diversity of online information, communication, collaboration and sharing with others. The integration of Internet services in the teaching practices can be responsible for thematic, social and digital improvement for the agents involved. There are many benefits when we use a Learning Management Systems (LMS) such as Moodle, to support the lectures in higher education. We also will consider its implications for student support and online interaction, leading educational agents to a collaborating of different learning environments, where they can combine face-to-face instruction with computer-mediated instruction, blended-learning, and increases the possibilities for better quality and quantity of human communication in a learning background. In general components of learning management systems contain synchronous and asynchronous communication tools, management features, and assessment utilities. These assessment utilities allow lecturers to systematize basic assessment tasks. Assessments can be straightaway delivered to the student, and upon conclusion, immediately returned with grades and detailed feedback. Therefore learning management systems can also be used for assessment purposes in Higher Education.
- Multicriteria Decision Support Model for Selection of Fiberglass SuppliersPublication . Rodrigues, Celina; Paula Lopes, AnaThis chapter presents a real case of a decision problem in supplier selection of one of the main raw materials of a wind blades industry. The study considered all currently qualified suppliers according to considerably rigorous standards and specifications and one in qualification process. It is a complex choice, given the strategic importance of the product and the multiplicity of criteria to be considered, both quantitative and qualitative. The strong competitiveness requires a special attention which concerns the supplier selection; not only the price matters; in fact, a day of stoppage due to failure in a delivery, for example, corresponds to high losses that would have justified the purchase from a supplier with a higher price but with no delivery failures. In order to contribute to the problem resolution, the methodologies PROMETHEE and AHP were applied, whose results allow the authors to stablish a ranking of the considered suppliers. The results will support the company on the selection of fiberglass suppliers and in some cases clarify where they can find the main trade-offs.
- Promoting audiovisual insights in math subjectsPublication . Soares, Filomena; Lopes, Ana PaulaIt seems that the digital world is all around us, wherever we turn to. Although not palpable, this world is already an important part of our everyday lives. When we talk specifically about the teaching/learning process we see that, at least in the last decade, the development of alternative and new strategies has been huge. The way students react to some methods and tactics is changing and engaging them in their own learning process is becoming a constant “challenge” to teachers, in all different educational levels. As Math professors in a High Education Institution where Mathematics is a basic and supporting course to other advanced (but non-Mathematical) ones, this so called “challenge” grows exponentially. In this paper, we analyze the impact of introducing and supporting some Math contents through video lectures, in a voice-over presentation style, based on animated arrangements, in our own mother language. These videos were developed for a first-year Math course in several Management degrees in the Tourism and Hospitality Area. The specific curricular items were chosen with a primary objective of trying to level up the mathematical competencies that are fundamental to the development of ‘mathematical literacy’ of our students. Our video lectures are available to students in our institutional Moodle platform, with all its features, along with other resources (as texts and proposed exercises) as well as in a YouTube channel. We will also describe students’ background areas of study in pre-university level and analyze if this has any influence in the way they interact with video-lectures in their own learning development and knowledge construction and report student’s perception of the eventual benefits of using this digital resource in engaging and promoting their self-responsibility in the learning process. Finally, we will analyze students’ evaluation of the videos recorded by the professors and uploaded to the Moodle platform and YouTube as a learning tool.
- Assessment experiences in a math course-grading questions and dilemmasPublication . Soares, Filomena Baptista; Nunes, Maria Paula; Lopes, Ana PaulaSimultaneously inherent “validation” tasks, as far as grading and assessing are concerned, fundamentally from the students’ point of view, but, sometimes, even from our own. The generalised Math “trauma” is a difficult start up invisible barrier that we must overcome every single semester, by implementing different strategies, developing new materials, motivating with digital and technological resources (using students’ digital skills), among many other tactics and schemes. But, in the end, the numerical grade – the knowledge and skills construction validation – must appear posted in the “system”. As Math lecturers in a Higher Education Institution, for more than twenty years, these problems are a daily challenge we face, and the issues we intend to analyse here, emerge as a consequence of a certain "emptiness" we feel regarding the assessment we have to carry out, in the sense that we still don’t have an answer to the following question: “Is it legitimate to "close your eyes" to the basic errors (some severe) when assessing learning outcomes in advanced subjects?” We teach at "end of the line", as far as General Mathematics is concerned, since our students are, essentially, from Management and Accounting Bachelor degrees. This paper will be structured in four distinct parts, starting with the Specific and General Outcomes and skills in the Math course in question, giving also a global vision of all its syllabus components and the teaching Methodologies implemented. Subsequently, we will refer to the coherence between teaching methods and the course learning objectives as well as their connection to the syllabus items. Finally we will go through a section of small questions and answers, with their respective detailed analysis, in order to provide an objective reading material, trying to promote a fruitful and open discussion on the subject.
- Teaching mathematics using massive open online coursesPublication . Soares, Filomena; Lopes, Ana PaulaDistance learning - where students take courses (attend classes, get activities and other sort of learning materials) while being physically separated from their instructors, for larger part of the course duration - is far from being a “new event”. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, this has been done through Radio, Mail and TV, taking advantage of the full educational potential that these media resources had to offer at the time. However, in recent times we have, at our complete disposal, the “magic wonder” of communication and globalization - the Internet. Taking advantage of a whole new set of educational opportunities, with a more or less unselfish “look” to economic interests, focusing its concern on a larger and collective “welfare”, contributing to the development of a more “equitable” world, with regard to educational opportunities, the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were born and have become an important feature of the higher education in recent years. Many people have been talking about MOOCs as a potential educational revolution, which has arrived from North America, still growing and spreading, referring to its benefits and/or disadvantages. The Polytechnic Institute of Porto, also known as IPP, is a Higher Education Portuguese institution providing undergraduate and graduate studies, which has a solid history of online education and innovation through the use of technology, and it has been particularly interested and focused on MOOC developments, based on an open educational policy in order to try to implement some differentiated learning strategies to its actual students and as a way to attract future ones. Therefore, in July 2014, IPP launched the first Math MOOC on its own platform. This paper describes the requirements, the resulting design and implementation of a mathematics MOOC, which was essentially addressed to three target populations: - pre-college students or individuals wishing to update their Math skills or that need to prepare for the National Exam of Mathematics; - Higher Education students who have not attended in High School, this subject, and who feel the need to acquire basic knowledge about some of the topics covered; - High School Teachers who may use these resources with their students allowing them to develop teaching methodologies like "Flipped Classroom” (available at http://www.opened.ipp.pt/). The MOOC was developed in partnership with several professors from several schools from IPP, gathering different math competences and backgrounds to create and put to work different activities such video lectures and quizzes. We will also try to briefly discuss the advertising strategy being developed to promote this MOOC, since it is not offered through a main MOOC portal, such as Coursera or Udacity.
- The Significant Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on supply chainsPublication . Paula Lopes, AnaAs the COVID-19 pandemic has spread across the world, the existence of disruptions in demand and supply have become more severe, conducted by containment measures taken by countries and affecting different sectors around the world. Although businesses and workplaces are restarting activities in some countries, with containment measures gradually being lifted, overall consumer demand is expected to remain low, also determined by the loss of jobs and income. Therefore, the scale of the impact on supply chains exceeded anything most companies had anticipated. This study aims to understand how companies were affected and identify some lessons learned about their vulnerabilities and the possible ways to address them in the long term. On the other hand, it is intended to reveal some of the impacts of COVID-19 and make some practical suggestions that can help in political and operational decisions to strengthen and build additional resilience in supply chains in the future.
- Flipped classroom with aPublication . Lopes, Ana Paula; Soares, Filomena BaptistaNowadays, the online environment and technology tools are changing the way professors are developing and presenting course curriculum. Alongside this growth, we have assisted to the fast development of distance learning tools such as Open Educational Resources (OER) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and the use of new teaching and learning models such the “Flipped Classroom” or “Inverted Classroom” model. This model is a pedagogical inversion of the traditional teaching paradigm: the main actions of the teaching and learning process that are used in classroom are now prepared by students previously before coming to class and provides the instructor with better opportunities for quality interaction with the students and helps students to develop a better understanding of the content and a deeper sense of community as a result of the student interaction in the course development and engagement. The purpose of this paper is to present an experimental Higher Educational plan called “Flipped Classroom with a MOOC”, within the project “Mathematics without STRESS - MOOC”, that is using flipped classroom model as a pedagogical strategy. Furthermore, it relates such strategy with active learning practices and discusses its effectiveness, investigating how the flipping affects student’s achievement and engagement. We also will present the results of a survey in which students were asked about “Flipped Learning with a MOOC” as a teaching method, using their experience from the course Mathematics Zero
- Flipping a mathematics course, a blended learning approachPublication . Lopes, Ana Paula; Soares, Filomena BaptistaFlipped classroom pedagogy has become popular in several different courses in Higher Educational Institutions (HEI). Important advantages being the increased level of lecturer and student interaction, which can have a strong impact on students’ motivation, engagement, satisfaction and performance. A flipped based experiment was implemented in 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 in a Mathematics Course, at the Institute of Accounting and Administration of Porto (ISCAP), using Moodle quizzes reinforced by in-class activities and support via PowerPoint with audio support, YouTube tutorial videos and online reading materials before and after classes. In this new organizational design for the teaching and learning paradigm, as its name transmits, there was pedagogical switch of the traditional academic procedure as students’ first contact with the subjects and themes was made outside the “four wall classroom bounds”. Teachers’ role was transposed into a kind of guide and facilitator, indicating the way to go, avoiding to walk in a parallel path, or even ahead, but indicating the way to go, motivating students in their own knowledge construction, letting them lead the way, following and supporting, constantly and carefully monitoring their learning outcomes, only interfering in the learning process as an anchor where students can rely, adjusting the right paths when they seem to deviate from the predefined learning goals. Classroom time was consumed with open discussions, solving tasks and application problems, clarifying the supporting fundaments, in order to improve students’ engagement into their learning process in a collaborative environment. The operational stages and procedures will be described and, additionally, several results obtained during its implementation will be presented.
- Online assessment using different tools and techniques in higher educationPublication . Paula Lopes, Ana; Baptista Soares, FilomenaAssessment can be a crucial component in the teaching and learning process and should measure or certify results. Online assessment means using the technology to provide assessment which can be diagnostic, formative or summative and can be considered a valuable tool in higher education as it allows teachers, on one hand, to have quick access to students’ performance and, on the other hand, students can receive instant and individual feedback, which helps them to structure their own learning path. There are many different ways to efficiently assess students’ learning online, the purpose of this paper is to introduce some online assessment tools and techniques that can be used in education to assess student performance using technology. In general, learning management systems, such as Moodle, use online assessment tools, some of which will be presented, based on the corresponding learning requirements and objectives. Several online assessment techniques, that undeniably support training, engage students, and provide instructors with perception of their students' learning process, will also be analyzed. Furthermore, several tools and techniques related to mathematics will be presented, like for instance STACK (System for Teaching and Assessment using a Computer Algebra Kernel) and iSpring Suite 9. STACK, an online assessment package for mathematics, is an open-source system that supports the development of sophisticated and challenging assessments for STEM subjects, enabling the direct and systematized feedback delivery to help students improve their performance and understanding. The iSpring Suite 9, a fully e-learning toolkit, with a Math equation editor which allows the development of interactive assessments and quizzes for e-Courses. Some advantages and disadvantages about the online assessment process will be also presented.
- “Flipped classroom with a MOOC” an e-learning model into a mathematics coursePublication . Lopes, Ana Paula; Soares, Filomena BaptistaNowadays, the online environment and technology tools are changing the way professors are developing and presenting course curriculum. Alongside this growth, we have assisted to the fast development of distance learning tools such as Open Educational Resources (OER) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and the use of new teaching and learning models such the “Flipped Classroom” or “Inverted Classroom” model. This model is a pedagogical inversion of the traditional teaching paradigm: the main actions of the teaching and learning process that are used in classroom are now prepared by students previously before coming to class and provides the instructor with better opportunities for quality interaction with the students and helps students to develop a better understanding of the content and a deeper sense of community as a result of the student interaction in the course development and engagement. The purpose of this paper is to present an experimental Higher Educational plan called “Flipped Classroom with a MOOC”, within the project “Mathematics without STRESS - MOOC”, that is using flipped classroom model as a pedagogical strategy. Furthermore, it relates such strategy with active learning practices and discusses its effectiveness, investigating how the flipping affects student’s achievement and engagement. We also will present the results of a survey in which students were asked about “Flipped Learning with a MOOC” as a teaching method, using their experience from the course Mathematics Zero.