This event will be in English, simultaneous translation to Portuguese will be available.

This session includes three presentations introducing approaches for facilitating collaborative research and scholarship in formal and informal learning.

Investigating technology design to promote social changes both in Brazil and in the UK, Dr Lara Piccolo will present some of her research on energy and information literacy, contrasting both contexts. Professor Cecília Baranaukas will introduce some interdisciplinary research projects in the context of e-inclusion and e-citizenship applying participatory and socially-responsible approaches to design technology in Brazil. Dr Trevor Collins will give an overview of The Open University’s Centre for STEM Pedagogy, including some examples of the practitioner-led scholarship that underpin the STEM faculty’s innovations in distance learning. 

Presenter bios

Dr Lara Piccolo worked for almost 10 years in Brazil bridging academia, policymaking and industry in research projects targeting digital inclusion, accessibility and energy literacy. Since 2014, she works at the Open University in the UK investigating the role of technology to engage people and communities with some global challenges like climate change, inequalities and universal access to technology. She is an IFIP TC13 representative and member of the Special Committee for Human-Computer Interaction at the Brazilian Computing Society (SBC).

Professor Cecília Baranauskas is Full Professor at the Institute of Computing, UNICAMP, Brazil. Her research interests have focused on human-computer interaction issues, particularly investigating different formalisms (including Organizational Semiotics and Participatory Design) in the analysis, design and evaluation of societal systems. She is leading several projects investigating the use of these formalisms in design contexts of e-Citizenship and e-Inclusion. In 2010 she received the ACM SIGDOC Rigo Award. She is an honorary member of the Brazilian Academy of Educational Technology (abte.org.br) and Member of the Governing board of UNESCO Institute for Information Technology in Education (IITE).

Dr Trevor Collins is the Director of eSTEeM, the OU’s Centre for STEM Pedagogy, and a Senior Research Fellow in the Knowledge Media Institute. His interdisciplinary research focuses on the design and use of technologies in teaching and learning. He led the introduction of interactive web broadcasting within the STEM Faculty to provide lab and fieldwork experiences at a distance, and pioneered the use of mobile and network technologies to enable students with disabilities to participate in fieldwork. 

Chairs: 

Dr Arthur Galamba and Isabela Milanezzi