Universidade de Aveiro

The Universidade de Aveiro (University of Aveiro, UA) in Portugal supports eLearning through its LMS Blackboard.

Universidade de Aveiro was founded in 1973. One particularity of the University of Aveiro is that apart from delivering university education degrees, it also delivers polytechnic education degrees in its four polytechnic schools of higher education. The University of Aveiro created its post-secondary school Technological Specialisation Courses (CET) with practical training in a work environment. The CETs have, as their main objective, the immediate placement of students in professions while also providing a qualification for further study on a higher education degree programme at UA.

The academic year of 2006/2007 marked the entry of the University of Aveiro into the Bologna era, with 13,000 students in attendance.

eLearning

It started its eLearning initiative with an experimental pilot programme in October 1998. The main objectives were to gain experience with web based learning. The target groups were on-campus students.

eLearning at the University is aimed towards helping students with learning and encouraging a diversity of pedagogical approaches. In 2004, the University organized the international conference on eLearning ‘eLes04’. The University has several departments that are contributing to ICT enriched education. Each of these departments has a special focus such as: content production and support, teacher training, support on infrastructure and technology, and library services. Besides the university wide services and systems, a number of departments still maintain additional services and systems suitable for their respective environment.

Internationalisation

To foster internationalisation and to gain from the experiences of other HEIs, the university as a whole participates in various projects such as: the Campus Europae (European University Foundation), European Consortium of Innovative Universities, and Tuning Educational Structures in Europe. The University has also been identified in 2005 as one of the 11 most advanced universities in terms of implementing the ‘ European Credit Transfer System’ (ECTS) for all courses. The university is now extending the use of the ECTS to the lifelong learning process.

Its web site is http://www.ua.pt/ and its e-learning system or LMS Blackboard can be found at http://elearning.ua.pt/

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