Isabel Cristina Carvalho

In an era marked by the increasing fragmentation of human relationships – where mechanisms of social and emotional connection often struggle to adapt to the acceleration of communicational technologies and digital ecosystems – Digital Media Art assumes a role of critical and sensitive mediation. The experimental and research-driven exploration of ways to reconfigure modes of being-with-others through technology fosters intersections between creative practices and other means, such as digital narrative and augmented reality, particularly given their immersive and interactive potential oriented toward ethical, social, and cultural concerns. These practices propose frameworks for listening, sharing and symbolic co-presence, where empathy is not conceived as a passive emotion, but as a relational process. This article offers a theoretical reflection on such frameworks, focusing on narrative portals activated through augmented reality, and analyses four contemporary international art projects (2021-2025) - Como Semillas en el Viento, Monumental Perspectives, Las Awichas and Augmented Landscapes of Empathy – which integrate technology and storytelling to cultivate affective and community-based connections. Through comparative analysis, this article aims to understand how these creative projects are situated within the field of Digital Media Art and how they configure spaces of relation and collective memory.

The increasing cultural and demographic diversity among higher education students highlights the challenges regarding accessibility and inclusion. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift toward flexible, technology-based teaching practices. However, inclusive, and accessible pedagogical practices lack consistency, particularly when supporting students with disabilities or diverse learning needs. This study evaluates the effectiveness of the Learning Design for Flexible Education (FLeD) Tool—a web-based platform developed to support teachers in designing flexible and inclusive learning scenarios. The research adopts a qualitative approach, featuring semi-structured interviews with two Portuguese experts in accessibility and inclusion. The experts analyzed three learning scenarios designed using the FLeD Tool, through the lens of Universal Design for Learning standards. The collected dataset was analyzed using thematic analysis to identify common issues, strengths, and opportunities for improvement. The findings show a gap between institutional policies and their practical application, mainly due to inconsistent teacher training and technical limitations. While the FLeD Tool supports more flexible and inclusive pedagogical designs, experts have identified key shortcomings such as the lack of automated accessibility checks and limited support for specific disabilities. Despite the reduced number of participants (two experts) and dataset (three learning scenarios), which limits the study’s generalizability, the conclusions draw attention to the pivotal role of systematic teacher training, embedded accessibility features and solid institutional policies in bridging the gap between policy aspiration and effective inclusive practice.

Based on flipped learning, digital competence, and inclusive instructional design, this study employs a mixed-method approach (quantitative and qualitative) to evaluate the pilot and involves academics from six European universities. Teacher participants co-designed and implemented flexible learning scenarios using the FLeD tool, which integrates pedagogical patterns, scaffolding strategies, and playful features. Using a mixed-methods research approach, this study collected and analyzed data from 34 teachers and indirectly over 800 students. Results revealed enhanced student engagement, self-regulated learning, and pedagogical innovation. While educators reported increased awareness of inclusive teaching and benefited from collaborative design, challenges related to tool usability, time constraints, and the implementation of inclusivity also emerged. The findings support the effectiveness of structured digital tools in promoting pedagogical transformation in online, face-to-face, and hybrid learning. This study contributes to the discussion on the digitalization of higher education by illustrating how research-informed design can enable educators to develop engaging and flexible inclusive learning environments in line with the evolving needs of learners and the opportunities presented by technology.

The Innovative Digital Education and Skills (IDEAS) ERASMUS+ project aimed to improve teachers' digital skills and competencies by directly responding to the EU's Digital Education Action-Plan (2021-27) Strategic-Priority 1. It involved the design of a 30-hour micro-credentialed teacher training course consisting of a digital toolkit with 14 bite-sized modules using adaptive learning models with the support of the IDEAS Mentors and implementing a pilot programme that was tested and evaluated. To carry out the course's instructional design, a needs analysis was conducted based on a literature review and a baseline survey to assess teachers' strengths, weaknesses, and needs in implementing digital pedagogy. After identifying teachers' needs, specific content was conceived, designed, and made available on a platform that allows access to the knowledge society. The study showed four areas of digital competencies needing training, and a learner persona was profiled following a gap analysis of the 99 responses. This data informed a pilot program with 80 Vocational Education and Training and Higher Education teachers to test the functionality of the digital Toolkit, the e-learning platform, design, quality, and impact of the content. Data analysis indicates that participating teachers improved their digital competencies and facilitated innovative learning experiences in their practices.

This article explores the disciplinary and thematic convergences of digital media art, urban life and social activism (in the digital plan), merging into a cohesive exploration of digital narratives and their role in supporting and boosting urban artivist networks. In fact, digital tools provide unique opportunities to broaden the scope and impact of socially-engaged art, primarily through artivist practices, while highlighting and emphasising inspiring existences and positions concerning urban rights and building citizenship. As such, in this exploratory essay, we seek to stress the importance of building counter-narratives from the grassroots based on ways of life, habits, customs and everyday experiences historically overlooked by dominant systems while at the same time building a theoretical-methodological framework to deconstruct urban strategies and practices and support different forms of self-representation. We will use two complementary dimensions to build our approach: (1) collecting, interpreting and processing data and (2) giving visibility to the referred alternative narratives. Regarding urban processes and physical spaces, these dimensions follow Lefebvre's structural thinking on the production of social space and the right to the city [1] [2], pointing out activist methodologies, e.g. those following principles of social justice, human rights, inclusion and equity, among others giving voice and space to the vulnerable individuals and communities.

This article proposes a decolonial debate on the virtual experimentation of some trails in Serra do Lenheiro. The aim is to provide inclusive digital historical narratives about the studied environment. Through the discussion of critical and interdisciplinary communication, the goal was to map the different temporalities and singularities of the Serra, combining geological, historical, architectural, and urban perspectives. The objective is to use geoconservation to highlight geodiversity in line with the fieldwork and experiences already conducted in the Serra. It is understood that augmented reality is one of the possible tools that allows greater accessibility, in the sense of reliving memories and critical understandings of historical processes.

This paper presents some of the results of fieldwork conducted during an artistic residency. It discusses the resultant video installation "Entre Caminhos: Escuta-Narrativa, Percursos e Temp(l)os de Memórias Vivas" ("Between Paths: Narrative-Listening, Routes, and Temporal Spaces of Living Memories"). The work explored the living memories of the first women who attended a primary girls' school in early 20th century Mamarrosa, Portugal. Through a detailed oral and gesture collection, the video installation captured testimonies and sounds of women who witnessed the transition and ruptures in education and teaching during that period. The first-person, intersectional narratives unveiled aspects of collective memory, enriching the understanding of intangible cultural heritage. Five main recurring topics were identified from the testimonies of the participants: Walking to School, Autonomy versus Violence in School, Break in the Educational Process, The Weight of the Female Condition and Living Memory. This process highlighted the power of video art in social representation and historic preservation from a female perspective, often underrepresented in historical narratives. It allows for a broader view of the community's history and a more inclusive and diverse representation of intangible cultural heritage and experimental procedures in image capture and editing. The paper reflects on the impact of women's digital narratives in the production of urban space. It proposes new modes of integrating plural narratives into the registry and collective memory of intangible cultural heritage. This work aims to contribute to the intersection of digital art and studies on intangible cultural heritage.