Search Results (9)

This study explores the transformative potential of the metaverse in redefining cultural heritage engagement, with a specific focus on the digital metamorphosis of the Museum of L’Avesnois in Fourmies. By leveraging advanced 3D scanning technologies and immersive virtual environments, select artifacts have been meticulously digitized, creating an unprecedented interactive platform that bridges accessibility gaps and invites global audiences to engage with cultural heritage. Variability in user experience, reflecting the diverse interactions, emotions, and cognitive responses of participants, serves as a critical analytical axis in this research. While diversity can yield invaluable insights into user preferences, excessive discrepancies risk fragmenting the coherence of engagement. This study demonstrates how strategic design interventions can mitigate such variability, fostering uniform yet personalized experiences. Through the integration of real-time social dynamics, enabled by customizable avatars and communication tools, the metaverse is established as a pioneering medium for collaborative cultural exploration. Employing a robust mixed-methods approach, this research synthesizes quantitative metrics with qualitative insights from in-depth interviews to critically evaluate the metaverse’s capacity to deliver authentic, emotionally resonant, and pedagogically impactful engagements. While challenges persist in replicating the emotive depth of physical exhibits and sustaining user attention, findings underscore the metaverse’s unparalleled efficacy in democratizing access to cultural artifacts and enabling transboundary social interactions. Furthermore, the seamless incorporation of previously inaccessible artifacts into these virtual domains significantly enhances both user engagement and educational outcomes. This work advances the discourse on digital heritage by presenting actionable insights into the design of virtual environments that uphold cultural authenticity, foster socially immersive interactions, and align with the broader paradigm of digital transformation. Full article

Responding to contemporary global challenges will require quality education, which presupposes changes in schools’ organizational structures, new roles and mentalities for the players involved and a culture of learning at the different levels of organizations. In this regard, we strive to understand how changing certain organizational structures, more specifically the organization of teaching by educational teams operating as professional learning communities, can have an impact on individual, collective and organizational learning at schools. To this end, we have adopted a qualitative research paradigm, put into operation through a case study, based on a qualitative-quantitative approach. We combined a descriptive statistical approach consisting of two questionnaires, which have been decoded and interpreted both structurally and semantically, with a content analysis of interviews, focused discussion groups and field diary notes, to examine a number of unique contexts and the perspectives of individual players. We concluded that a change in organizational structures is an essential but insufficient condition. What is needed is a change in the players’ beliefs and collaboration that provides deep learning. As such, a substantial change in education at the level of educational organization requires joint action at the levels of structure, middle leadership, beliefs and professional cultures. Full article

The Portuguese educational system aims at nurturing the holistic development of individuals and societal progress, surpassing the mere transmission of curriculum-based knowledge. While considerable advancements have been made, the need for ongoing innovation and equal educational opportunities remains evident, so that all children can have not only equal access to education, but also equal chances of success. This study investigates the largest Portuguese Scout movement, the CNE, exploring its organisational and pedagogical approaches, potentially applicable in formal education settings. This research surveyed participants aged 18–22, having completed approximately 12 years in the Scout movement. Data collection via focus group followed a semi-structured script, before a thorough content analysis was carried. Findings are organised as follows: Pedagogical organisation in learning cycles; Patrol system; The four stages of the Project Method; Characterization of the Scout Game and other learning process dimensions; Other competencies and values developed throughout the Scout learning course; and Comparisons with formal education contexts. The discourse of participants strongly suggests the Scout movement’s potential to inspire educational change, displaying consistent indicators of pedagogical innovation. The study advocates for further exploration of the CNE’s pedagogical functioning and its potential to serve as an inspiration for transformative changes in educational systems worldwide, as evidenced by the learners’ reflections. Full article

In 2020, education found itself involved in a whirlwind of metamorphosis, of transformations that required responses to the emergencies dictated by the pandemic. In Portugal, many schools opted for Microsoft 365 as the platform of choice for providing adequate resources for teaching and learning processes, while also ensuring remote teaching in an integrated and inclusive way. In this context, we carried out an investigation with the objectives of knowing the opinion of teachers about the use of Microsoft 365 in their classes and identify their degree of satisfaction with its use. The methodology adopted had a descriptive and exploratory nature, following a mixed paradigm. A total of 101 primary and secondary school teachers from schools in Northern Portugal participated in the study. A questionnaire and an interview were used as data collection instruments. The results showed that the most respondents revealed a high level of satisfaction with the use of Microsoft 365, and that its use was accompanied by the employment of active methodologies. Moreover, despite the lack of initial or ongoing training of teachers in the use of this technology and the students’ lack of digital competence, Microsoft 365 proved to be an adequate response to the confinement and ensured students’ learning in a safe environment. Full article

Since July 2009, when the popular founder of Boko Haram, Mohammed Yusuf, was extrajudicially killed by the police, the group has become radicalised. Boko Haram started by terrorising the country, particularly the northeastern zone, which extends to Cameroon, Niger, and Lake Chad. Several works on the group, mostly by foreign commentators and scholars, have mainly attributed its rise to political and economic factors. Many of those works have not also recognised the metamorphosis from terrorism to insurgency, wherein the group is now replacing the secular status of Nigeria’s configuration with a monolithic Islamic caliphal rule in the swathes of land that it has captured. Even though the Nigerian government has adopted the factors canvassed by those scholars and also denies the group an ideological anchorage, I argue that Boko Haram’s ideological scaffolding is hinged on ultra-jihadi Salafism. Relying on qualitative sources, I employ a historical and interpretive framework in explicating the origin of Boko Haram and in content analysing President Muhammad Buhari’s 2015 inaugural speech, which denies the group of any ideological leaning on Islam. I then contend that such a denial has made counter-insurgency measures of the government counter-productive, as efforts at meeting political and economic factors are difficult to achieve in the present circumstance. I, therefore, recommend counter-insurgency measures, which include, amongst others, Western education, Islamic de-radicalisation processes, and counter-insurgency narratives, as well as ideas to cut off the recruitment of youth into the group and military engagement, as both short- and long-term strategies. Full article

During the COVID-19 pandemic, most Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) across the globe moved towards “emergency online education”, experiencing a metamorphosis that advanced their capacities and competencies as never before. Teaching and Learning Centers (TLCs), the internal units that promote sustainable transformations, can play a key role in making this metamorphosis last. Existing models for TLCs have defined the competencies that they could help develop, focusing on teachers’, students’, and managers’ development, but have mislead aspects such as leadership, organizational processes, and infrastructures. This paper evaluates the PROF-XXI framework, which offers a holistic perspective on the competencies that TLCs should develop for supporting deep and sustainable transformations of HEIs. The framework was evaluated with 83 participants from four Latin American institutions and used for analyzing the transformation of their teaching and learning practices during the pandemic lockdown. The result of the analysis shows that the PROF-XXI framework was useful for identifying the teaching and learning competencies addressed by the institutions, their deficiencies, and their strategic changes. Specifically, this study shows that most institutions counted with training plans for teachers before this period, mainly in the competencies of digital technologies and pedagogical quality, but that other initiatives were created to reinforce them, including students’ support actions. Full article

The mining industry in the world has undergone a major metamorphosis in recent years. These changes have forced higher education to modify the curricula in a thorough way to meet the mining entrepreneurs’ needs. The paper’s scope is to answer the research question—how to attract students and implement Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in higher education in mining engineering? Based on the case of international cooperation carried out at the Faculty of Geoengineering, Mining and Geology of the Wrocław University of Science and Technology (WUST) within the framework of educational projects co-financed by European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) and EIT Knowledge and Innovation Communities Raw Materials (EIT RM), the authors prove that the idea of sustainable development can be introduced into the system of teaching mining specialists at every level of their higher education (engineering and master’s studies), through developing their new competencies, introducing new subjects taking into account innovative solutions and technologies, or placing great emphasis on environmental and social aspects. Examples of new curricula show a good way to change into the new face of a mining engineer. Full article

The emergence of Industry 4.0, also referred to as the fourth industrial revolution, has entirely transformed how the industry or business functions and evolves. It can be attributed to its broadening focus on automation, decentralization, system integration, cyber-physical systems, etc. Its implementation promises numerous benefits in terms of higher productivity, greater volatility, better control and streamlining of processes, accelerated enterprise growth, sustainable development, etc. Despite the worldwide recognition and realization of Industry 4.0, its holistic adoption is constrained by the requirements of specific skills among the workforce. The personnel are expected to acquire adaptive thinking, cognitive and computational skills, predominantly in the area of information technology, data analytics, etc. Thus, the universities that laid the foundation for future talents or trends in society have to adapt and modernize the existing programs, facilities, and infrastructure. This reshaping of higher education in consonance with the vision of Industry 4.0 possesses its opportunities and challenges. There are, of course, a multitude of factors involved and they need a reasonable assessment to strategically plan this metamorphosis. Therefore, this work aims to explore and analyze the different factors that influence the progression and enactment of Industry 4.0 in universities for sustainable education. For this purpose, a systematic approach based on a questionnaire as well as a SWOT (strengths (S), weaknesses (W), opportunities (O), and threats (T)) integrated with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is adopted. The questionnaires are administered to university employees and students (or stakeholders) to assess their viewpoint, as well as to estimate the priority values for individual factors to be included in SWOT. The AHP is implemented to quantify the different factors in terms of weights using a pairwise comparison matrix. Finally, the SWOT matrix is established depending on the questionnaire assessment and the AHP weights to figure out stakeholders’ perspectives, in addition to the needed strategic scheme. The SWOT implementation of this research proposes an aggressive approach for universities, where they must make full use of their strengths to take advantage of the emerging opportunities in Industry 4.0. The results also indicate that there are fundamental requirements for universities in Industry 4.0, including effective financial planning, skilled staff, increased industrial partnerships, advanced infrastructure, revised curricula, and insightful workshops. This investigation undoubtedly underlines the importance of practical expertise and the implementation of digital technologies at the university level to empower novices with the requisite skills and a competitive advantage for Industry 4.0. Full article

The didactic design applications offer application hints that allow for new composite solutions. With the practice of drawing, we can analyze solutions and strategies that may have attractive end product application outcomes. In the case under analysis, such solutions have as their purpose the reinterpretation of the works (which we call “primary subject”) “Red and Blue” and “Berlin Chair” by Gerrit Rietveld. The “reinterpretation” is made with the intention to break down and understand the specific characteristics of the two subjects, allowing the reinterpretation (metamorphic). This reinterpretation is guided by the common comparison keys identified by the analysis of evocative subjects (which we will call subordinate subjects), chosen specifically for the purpose of renewing the primary subject. Full article