This book brings together the contributions of the 6th International Conference on Smart Learning Ecosystems and Regional Development, which aims at promoting reflection and discussion concerning R&D work, policies, case studies, entrepreneur experiences with a special focus on understanding the relevance of smart learning ecosystems (e.g., schools, campus, working places, informal learning contexts, etc.) for regional development and social innovation and how the effectiveness of the relation of citizens and smart ecosystems can be boosted. This forum has a special interest in understanding how technology-mediated instruments can foster the citizen’s engagement with learning ecosystems and territories, namely by understanding innovative human-centric design and development models/techniques, education/training practices, informal social learning, innovative citizen-driven policies, technology-mediated experiences and their impact. This set of concerns will contribute to foster the social innovation sectors and ICT and economic development and deployment strategies alongside new policies for smarter proactive citizens.
Chapter "Robots as My Future Colleagues: Changing Attitudes Toward Collaborative Robots by Means of Experience-Based Workshops" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Óscar Mealha is Full Professor at the Department of Communication and Art, University of Aveiro (UA), Portugal. He develops his research at DigiMedia Research Centre/UA, in the area of "Information and Communication in Digital Platforms" in the context of "Knowledge Media and Connected Communities" with several projects, masters and doctoral supervisions and publications on interaction design and analysis techniques and methods, namely for UX design and evaluation, usability evaluation, and visualization of interaction/infocommunication activity. He is involved in infocommunication mediation projects such as "Unified Communication & Collaboration" with IT companies, "Visualization of Open Data Dashboards for Citizen Engagement and Learning" in municipalities and smart territories, and "Knowledge Interface School-Society (KISS)" with school clusters within the scientific network ASLERD. He is currently Director of the Doctoral Program on Information and Communication in Digital Platforms, a joint program of the University of Aveiro and University of Porto.
Mihai Dascalu is Full Professor at University Politehnica of Bucharest, responsible for the courses of Object-Oriented Programming, Semantic Web Applications, and Data Mining and Data Warehousing. He has extensive experience in national and international research projects with more than 200 published papers. Complementary to his competencies in NLP, technology-enhanced learning, and discourse analysis, Mihai holds a multitude of professional certifications and extensive experience on strategic projects on non-refundable funds (EU, WB, USTDA). Moreover, Mihai has received the distinction “IN TEMPORE OPPORTUNO” in 2013 as the most promising young researcher in UPB, has obtained a Senior Fulbright scholarship in 2015, has become a Fulbright Ambassador since 2018, and holds the US patent # 9734144 B2. Mihai is alsoCorresponding Member of the Academy of Romanian Scientists.
Tania Di Mascio is Assistant Professor at the Department of Engineering Computer Science and Mathematics of University of L’Aquila, Italy. She obtained a Ph.D. working on HCI research field, and she awarded a master's degree in Electronic Engineering. She cooperated with national and international research institutes. Her primary research activities are in HCI, user interface usability and accessibility, as well as in TEL, with a focus on information visualization and interaction paradigms. She was Coordinator of several European projects. She is Author or Co-Author of more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals and international and national conferences. She is Member of Committees of international and national conferences. She is in the Editorial Board of International Journal on HCI and TEL research fields.
