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During the past two years, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have created wide interest in the academic world raising both enthusiasm for new opportunities for universities and many concerns for the future of university education. The discussion has mainly appeared in non-scientific forums, such as magazine articles, columns and blogs, making it difficult to judge wider opinions within academia. To collect more rigorous data we surveyed teachers, researchers, and academic managers on their opinions and experiences of MOOCs. In this paper, we present our analysis of responses from the computer science academic community (n=137). Their feelings about MOOCs are highly mixed. Content analysis of open-ended questions revealed that the most often mentioned positive aspects included affordances of MOOCs, freedom of time and location for studying, and the possibility to experience teaching from top-level international teachers/experts. The most common negative aspects included concerns about pedagogical designs of MOOCs, assessment practices, and lack of interaction with the teacher. About half the respondents claimed they had not changed their teaching as a result of MOOCs, a small number used MOOCs as learning resources and very few were engaging with MOOCs in any significant way.

One of the purposes of this study is to evaluate how the choice of teaching method can be assisted by knowledge of a student’s personality type and learning style. The present research is undertaken in the context of Web 2.0 tools use within the Portuguese literature subject at Escola Portuguesa de Macao (EPM). The Felder-Soloman index of learning style (ILS) and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) based upon Jung’s theory of psychological nature were used as measures of learning style and personality type with 8th grade EPM students. Descriptive and chi-squared correlation statistical results of the associations between personality and learners types are presented. These results are discussed positing that the knowledge of student’s personality traits and learning styles together may have a notable implication for teaching methods.

To what extent is students' understanding of computer science culturally situated? This, possibly philosophical question, has come to the surface at Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, where many Chinese students study computer science together with the local students. We did an exploratory study using email interviews to see if our intuitions could be relied on. We collected data from Chinese students studying in master programs and analysed the data using a phenomenographic perspective. A complex intertwined relationship between the content of their learning (the WHAT), the ways in which they went about studying (the HOW), the aims of their studies (the WHY), and the competencies developed from the intercultural context they studied in (the WHERE) was observed. In this paper we offer some insights from the results of the pilot study and discuss how they have shaped our on-going study in the field.

Phenomenography is a well-known empirical research approach that is often used to investigate students' ways of learning programming. Phenomenographic pedagogy is an instructional approach to plan learning and teaching activities. This theoretical paper gives an overview of prior research in phenomenographic studies of programming and shows how the results from these research studies can be applied to course design. Pedagogic principles grounded in the phenomenographic perspective on teaching and learning are then presented that consider how to tie students' experiences to the course goals (relevance structure) and how to apply variation theory to focus on the desired critical aspects of learning. Building on this, an introductory object-oriented programming course is described as an example of research-based course design. The insights gained from the experience of running the course are shared with the community of computer science educators, as also the benefits and responsibilities for those who wish to adopt the phenomenographic perspective on learning to plan their teaching. The development of an increased awareness of the variation in students' ways of experiencing programming and the need to broaden the context of the programming course are discussed.

The difficult task of innovation is a key facet of Research & Development (R&D) institutions. To Design, innovation is to make the project technically feasible, economically viable, merchandising interesting and emotionally engaging. Design Thinking integrated with R&D organizations can foster the relationship between Universities and new markets. By addressing these topics, this book researches new emerging design methods and provide an overview of Design Thinking tools that can be applied in an early stage of the R&D research process to produce meaningful results. It is taken into account that design, through Design Thinking, extends to the experience that costumers/users have with products/services or even multidimensional experiences, which is a relevant input for R&D innovation development. In fact, the establishment of coherent guidelines for the Design Thinking process is a very complex task, due to its interdisciplinary requirements, that convey many diverse mindsets. The main focus of this book is creating an analysis toolkit that enables non-specialist and specialist users to perform high-quality design solutions.

Crime fiction in China emerged in the 1890s in translations of Western works, and evolved from the mere imitation of Western crime fiction to becoming an autonomous literary genre. Despite fluctuations in popularity, the genre of Chinese crime fiction, the plots of which are based on true cases, has retained a reasonably constant presence on the literary scene, and has captured the popular imagination in contemporary China and, more recently, across the world. After the demise of Mao, under whose governance the genre was banned, the government of the early Deng regime began to favor so-called “legal system literature” (fazhi wenxue), and aimed to use it to propagate moral principles and maintain political control in opposition to writers who strived for independence and originality. Since the mid and late 1980s, which were considered the heyday of Chinese crime fiction, and the expansion of the legal system and legal institutions, crime fiction has served to illuminate the role of law and to display new social perceptions. To investigate these attitudes, I focus on works of contemporary Chinese crime fiction by arguing that they are expressions of a confluence of cultural exchange and new trends. Several factors may have contributed to such a change, from the impact of the cinema and television serials in China to the celebrity status of Chinese detectives, lawyers and judges both as crime solvers and writers in the Chinese mainland and amongst the Chinese writing diaspora. An important finding is that besides giving detailed descriptions of legal procedures, all of the works studied have clearly shifted away from the traditional formula of Chinese crime fiction, that is, of the quest of a hero for justice, punishment, and revenge, to focus on the process of solving crime and the rendering of justice through legal processes. It seems that crime fiction is becoming crucial in conveying a new understanding of citizen’s rights in an attempt to fit into ongoing contemporary debates on universalistic notions of justice and the competence of legal institutions to provide justice to increasingly marginalized sectors of contemporary China.

Virgílio de Lemos (1929-2013), poeta de vanguarda, é um dos precursores da modernidade e experimentalismo como criador do “barroco estético” que ele próprio designou como a linguagem poética marcante nas letras moçambicanas no das décadas de 50 e 60

This article presents an insight into one of the regions with the fastest-growing economy, heavily based on an entertainment, gaming and tourism industry, and that is urgently looking for a sustainable model that articulates with complementary sectors within the cultural and creative industries – Macao. Macao is facing a major economic and social challenge; it has grown as a vulnerable economy relying almost exclusively on gaming revenues. Alternative activities to diversify the economy are urgently required to answer the competition risks haunting this industry. The cultural and creative industries could be a complementary activity – a vehicle for economic diversification. However, current public and private stakeholders for the cultural and creative sector might have been neglecting the unique cultural and heritage ecosystem of the territory, focusing on isolate opportunities and overlooking an inclusive and robust strategy. A sustainable model that attends to the local conditions and its people is required for alternative activities to become a meaningful sector for the social and economic development of Macao.