Abstract
The research activities in a Higher Education Institution (HEI) is highly dependent of the development of research projects. Most times, these projects have, at the core of their workforce, scholarship fellows financed by the project budget and responsible for the execution of very specific research tasks. The procurement process, leading to the contracting of these fellows, evolves several internal bureaus, from several organic units of the HEI, in a complex and long process. This work reports on the development of system to support this process. The solution was integrated in the HEI ecosystem in a harmonious manner, by implementing the necessary features and using the other HEI systems features when possible. After a year, the scholarship management system has proved a success, providing the user features to conduct the process as well as the management analytics to proper support the governance of the research area.

Abstract
The University of Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro is part of a consortium that is providing courses in an e-learning model. In this courses, the students' evaluation requires their physical presence. Currently, the consortium has the general objective of provide evaluation activities in all of the consortium's institutions, independently of the student's Higher Education Institution (HEI) of origin. That way, the student can go through the learning process on-line, using the Learning Management System (LMS), and attend an evaluation activity at the HEI geographically more conveniently located. In pursuing this objective, the consortium is creating a set of specific rooms with the sole purpose of supporting the evaluation of e-learning students. These rooms are located in each one of the HEIs, and equipped with thin personal computers (PC), connected to a local, properly configured, server. These PCs and server will run a customized version of the operating system, in a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) model, providing a controlled and safe infrastructure for the usage of the LMS to execute the evaluation activities. In a first phase, it is being created one room in each one of the consortium HEIs. A set of rules and a certification process will be designed, in order to have a standard level of service across all the rooms. Together with the certification process it will also be defined an audit process in order to regularly verify the compliance of the rooms with the previously designed certification standards.

Abstract
This work draws upon the theoretical foundations of Special Education for People with Disability, Environmental Education and the Human Computer Interaction (HCI), from the Activity Theory perspective, to propose the MusicPaint software. Initially, the design considerations of MusicPaint are presented. Then, its pilot use by seven students with disability is described. From the qualitative and quantitative evidence of performance that was gathered, the key findings are presented and discussed. Despite the limited number of participants in the experimental validation scenarios, the findings reveal the potentiality of the MusicPaint to enhance the accessibility of students with disability to Environmental Education opportunities, contributing to the HCI-based enhancement of accessibility in the educational settings. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.

Abstract

Abstract
Aging is a natural process that progressively introduces limitations in a person's life, which can have dramatic effects on the person's lifestyle and wellbeing and in most cases is related to the strength of the person's social bonds with the family and friends group. Therefore, it is important to maintain these bonds in the various stages of life, especially in the later life, when the individual has health limitations and may be living in a care centre. In this work, we developed an exploratory approach to the usage of ICT systems in order to autonomy assist the elderly in maintaining their social connections and relationships with family and friends. It doesn't substitutes the human care, but it should assist and encourage the elderly to preserve and develop their social activities and the relationships with their family and friends social group. We propose the design of a software system, capable of running in autonomous devices, such as, robots and other consumer appliances, enabling them to recognize and interact with the users, according to their state of mind and the specific current moment context. The interactions should be simple and focused on keeping the users engaged and informed about the current life events of their family and friends, and create the opportunities for the users to interact with the participants of those events by creating interaction proposals. On a technical level, the system should have knowledge about the user and be able to acquire and update context information from social media, video cameras, email, etc, regarding the user and the persons from his family and friends groups, in order to develop meaningful interactions with the user. An adaptive user interface would present and manage the interactions, acting as a mediator between the user and his family and friends group.

Abstract