This chapter will address results of LE@D's project “Teaching in Times of Emergency: Digital Transition,” which focused on the experience of rapid digital transition to an “emergency teaching,” a scenario quite different from distance education. Through a mixed methods approach, data was collected through an online questionnaire applied to students and videoconference interviews conducted with both higher education faculty and students. Participants in this research are students and faculty from eight Portuguese higher education institutions, four from universities (three public and one private) and four from polytechnic institutes (three public and one private), covering the regions of Lisbon and Tagus Valley, Alentejo and Algarve (Central and Southern Portugal). In this chapter, the authors present a preliminary analysis of the results obtained related to the psychological aspects experienced during this period, aiming at understanding the impact this shift has had on students' cognitive adaptation and social and emotional processes.

We witness the field of technology enhanced learning to have experienced several waves of technology thrusts. Driven by the advent of artificial intelligence in early Eighties, computer and cognitive scientists were attracted to the research of intelligent tutoring systems, studying how one-to-one interaction between a student and a computer affects learning. The research community of computer supported collaborative learning, basically spun off from that of artificial intelligence in education, was spurred by the rapid growth of Internet in mid Nineties. Early in this decade, the wireless, mobile, and ubiquitous technologies have become feasible enough for researchers to explore the design of learning activities in a more context enriched, situated, and authentic environment. Today, digital games employ advanced computing power, 3D animation, and Internet technology while intelligent toys, embedded with chips and sensors, utilize wireless, mobile, and ubiquitous technologies. Brought forth by the digital game industry, genera of these games inspire researchers to investigate the emotional elements in technology enhanced learning. At the same time, inheriting the Lego-Logo tradition in Eighties, there is a rapidly growth of interest in the design of intelligent toys for learning.Indeed, over the decades, the scope of technology enhanced learning research has been expanding -pedagogies from individualized to social to game-rules-directed, people learning with from individual to group to large online community, places from classroom and home to museum and outdoors, computing devices from computer to toy to any physical object, and design focus from whether can learn to whether will learn. This allows researchers to reframe long-standing questions, ideas, and approaches to learning. This conference convenes experts in digital games and toys from academia and industry to address fundamental questions about these new technologies for learning: What kinds of meaningful learning takes place through digital toys and games, and how does the process of deep understanding develop in these contexts? What new theories are needed to explain the phenomena of learning through digital game and toy-based play and what old theories can be extended to this domain? How can we characterize the pedagogies of digital game and toy based learning? How can these technologies be adopted for formal and informal learning settings? Are there possible adverse outcomes and how can they be avoided, minimized, or mitigated? Featured with keynotes, paper presentations, posters, panels, interactive events, and tutorials, The First IEEE International Workshop on Digital Game and Intelligent Toy Enhanced Learning (DIGITEL2007) provides a forum for researchers and practitioners from various disciplines to exchange ideas to lay the foundation for this emerging research area. We received 60 submissions with authors from 16 countries. This volume of proceedings collects 11 long papers, 13 short papers, and 20 posters presented in the event.

In today’s postdigital society, the public presence of academics on the Web and the consequent affirmation of a given identity or of a multidimensional identity imply a much more complex and multifaceted management of their image than when we were dealing with a scholar whose identity was affirmed in circumscribed spaces and times. In this work, we seek to analyze the positioning of the subjects about their online identities and the ways in which they express the multiple facets of the construction of their online selves. We adopted a Thematic Analysis approach to qualitative research and used NVivo to analyze the data collected through semi-structured interviews of 13 subjects from a purposive sample of digital scholars. Three major themes were identified: Theme A—Digital-Presence Awareness; Theme B—The Public and the Private Spheres; and Theme C—Offline, Online, and Hybrid Selves. Overall, subjects clearly express the awareness of the need to build a presence on the Web. While there is a general concern to preserve a certain level of authenticity, intimacy, and privacy on the Web, there seems to be some heterogeneity in the experiencing of these processes. For some participants, the distinction between public and private and between personal and professional should be clearly marked, while for others, the necessarily hybrid nature of identity should be assumed, arguing that it is no longer possible to make a clear separation between the offline and the online world. This work, thus, shows different shades in the way academics construct their presence on the Web and how differently they assume several of the constitutive dimensions of their identities.

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This proposal is part of an ongoing research and presents the results on the perceptions and pedagogical practices experienced by students from various higher education degrees in Portuguese higher education institutions, during the period of social confinement determined by the Portuguese Government, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The main objective of the general research was to understand how Higher Education faculty and students experienced the digital transition to emergency education and the pedagogical practices adopted during the period. The research was based on a mixed methods approach and, in order to address the research objectives and describe the pedagogical practices implemented, specific instruments were developed for data collection. A questionnaire was developed, aimed at students, and interviews aimed at both students and faculty, focusing on technological and pedagogical dimensions, as well as the assessment of the experience. Data collection was carried out after the first lockdown, at the end of the first semester of 2020, and took place in eight higher education institutions. In this paper we will present a preliminary analysis of Questionnaire results related to two dimensions: online communication and assessment.