The differences between secondary education and Higher Education (HE) are numerous, both in terms of teaching methodologies and as well as evaluation/validation procedures. Until a few years ago, the HE assessment practices were reduced, with some exceptions from practical/laboratory curricular units, to written exams, carried out on the same day and at the same time by all, or, at most, two frequencies (tests) over the course of the semester or year. With growing concerns in terms of learning outcomes and students’ success, globalisation and the massification of education, several alternative models have been tested, both in terms of teaching/learning methodologies (flipped, project-based, “blended”, among others) and assessment practices (portfolio, continuous, segmented, formative, and others). The fast development of electronic devices has been promoting the development and sharing of several digital educational tools and their use seem to be a good choice to promote actual students’/professors’ interaction and corresponding socialization, even in some assessment tasks. In this particular case, online activities can be transformed into powerful self-assessment resources for students, stimulating reflection and promoting independent learning. Moodle, as an open Learning Management System (LMS), has all the requisites and potential features to be a fine supporting tool to several activities, specifically to assessing ones. In this paper, we will briefly describe Moodle potentialities, with some application examples based on literature review and present the work developed on several Mathematic curricular units from different schools of the Polytechnic of Porto, where Moodle is used as an online assessment tool, to promote a continuous/segmented model with specific and different activities designed for each course.

Information about the paper titled "FLIPPING A MATHEMATICS COURSE, A BLENDED LEARNING APPROACH" at IATED Digital Library

Tourism has been gaining increasing importance in the global economy, in general, and, more specifically, in Europe, Portugal, and smaller areas such as Portugal’s Norte region. The north of Portugal has a rich cultural, historical and architectural landscape heritage, including some pearls that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has classified over the years as World Heritage Sites. With its wide-ranging impact on economic growth, employment and social development, tourism can be a powerful tool with which to shape the Portuguese economy, contributing to the country’s competitiveness, richness and cohesion. Therefore, the government and tourism stakeholders have recently made a stronger commitment to developing this sector. The goal of this study was to analyse tourism policies’ contributions to the development of tourism sector in northernmost region of Portugal, included in the National Strategic Plan for Tourism (PENT) and in the Regional North Tourism Agenda (ART). This study sought to achieve these objectives by focusing on two main aspects. First, it examined the characteristics of the sector, identifying the tourism products in Norte region. Second, this research analysed the overall picture of the sector’s development between 2004 and 2014, for that we made a descriptive analysis of the main tourism indicators based on data collected from several sources, namely the Instituto Nacional de Estatística (National Statistics Institute) (INE), PENT, the Comissão de Coordenação e Desenvolvimento Regional do Norte (Northern Portugal Regional Coordination and Development Commission), Turismo de Portugal (Tourism of Portugal) and Turismo do Porto e Norte de Portugal (Tourism of Oporto and Northern Portugal). The results reveal that investment in tourism in the Norte region has included offering eight primary tourism products and differentiators in four tourism subregions (i.e. Oporto Metropolitan Area, Alto Minho, Douro and Terras de Trás-os-Montes). Comparing the forecast values in terms of overnight stays, tourists and revenue set by PENT, the reality showed that the results were a little bit far from the expected; however the findings confirm the common perception that Portugal’s Norte region is still experiencing a trend towards growth as a tourist destination.

Information about the paper titled "VIDEO LECTURES AND ONLINE ACTIVITIES TO ENGAGE STUDENTS IN A FLIPPED CLASSROOM" at IATED Digital Library

The COVID pandemic has touched many aspects of everyone’s life. Education is one of the fields greatly affected by it, as students and teachers were forced to move online and quickly adapt to the online environment. Assessment is a crucial part of education, especially in STEM fields. A gap analysis was performed by expert groups in the frame of an Erasmus+ project looking at the practices of six European countries. Specialists teaching university-grade mathematics in seven European institutions were asked about their perception of gaps in the assessment of students both before (2019) and during (2021) the pandemic. This qualitative study looks at the difference in perception of such gaps after almost one year of online teaching. The analysis of their responses showed that some gaps were present before the pandemic, as well as others that are specific to it. Some gaps, such as the lack of IT infrastructure and the need to adapt materials to an online environment, have been exacerbated by the outbreak.