This NOVA 2024 Day, dedicated to the theme “Inspire and Build”, was also the stage for the presentation of the 3rd edition of the Pedagogical Innovation Award.
The creation of this award was announced by the Rector of NOVA, João Sàágua, on the first NOVA Quality Day, in 2021, inspired by the University’s mission, which is to promote quality teaching – in all study cycles, by academics of excellence, capable of offering their students a transformative and intellectually challenging educational experience.
It is in this context that, on this NOVA Day 2024, the work “Can the flipped classroom methodology make the bioenergy teaching and learning processes more engaging?”, presented by the team formed by Nuno Lapa, Inês Matos and Márcia Ventura.
The team of this assistant professor and NOVA FCT researchers chose the flipped classroom approach – which encourages individual and independent exploration of topics before class, with class time being used for active discussion – to implement a number of aspects that are absolutely innovative programmes that promote greater student involvement and more effective interaction with their teachers. In addition, the process allows students to manage their time more efficiently, creating even greater interest in face-to-face sessions.
Honourable Mentions for NOVA IMS, NOVA School of Law and Nova SBE projects
The first of the honourable mentions went to Marco Painho and Vicente Tang from NOVA IMS. The title was “Blending the Flipped Classroom and Generative AI: personalised chatbots to support flipped learning, foster critical thinking and promote AI literacy”. AI literacy).
Their project aimed to design a pedagogical environment that combined flipped classrooms and personalized chatbots for different types of learning. As the authors explained, in the registration process, this pilot study turned to the use of in-course chatbots to not only provide assistance, but also to create a discussion channel about prompt engineering, critical thinking, and broader implications of AI-generated content.
The second Honourable Mention was awarded to the project by Filipe Brito Bastos, professor at NOVA School of LAW. Entitled “From the Station to the Lecture Hall – An Administrative Law Podcast”, the project refers to a podcast available on Spotify (link here) which aims to make Administrative Law less intimidating.
The process is relatively simple: college students are asked to develop and record lectures about the course content for their peers who are attending the class for the first time. The rule that cannot be broken is that the episodes must be so short and simple that students can listen to them between the São Sebastião metro station (the station most used by NOVA School of Law students), and their classrooms. . The inspiration? The concerns of the students who came to her, informally and in assessments, and also the NOVA Pedagogical Innovation Workshop, which took place two years ago in the semester that NOVA dedicated to the topic.
The third Honorable Mention was awarded to Marta Almeida, from Nova SBE, who presented the project “Gaming in Accounting Teaching”, which aimed to counter the general perception that accounting is a difficult subject, often considered too technical, leading to a lack of interest and enthusiasm for courses in the area.
By introducing gamification as a teaching tool, the author explained, it was possible to make the learning process more interactive and enjoyable. The second objective was, of course, to improve active learning outcomes. By focusing on the integration of immersive technology, which transformed a paper case study into a digital format, it was also possible to increase student engagement and learning.