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Abstract
In this chapter, we describe the design and implementation of a Pedagogical Innovation Center (PIC) at the Polytechnic of Porto. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted our day to day lives, our businesses, the world trade and movements. Education was not spared. In fact, it was one of the sectors most heavily affected by COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers were forced, from night to day, to adjust a purely face-to-face teaching style, to a 100\% online set. This is known as emergency remote teaching. Several difficulties have arisen both for teachers and students. The first had to structure all their teaching materials from scratch, had to design and apply new assessment methods, and struggled to get their students' motivation. On their side, the students lacked engagement, social interaction with peers and teachers, the ability to have a more autonomous learning style. © 2023, IGI Global. All rights reserved.

Abstract
This paper presents a study on the use of gamified educational escape rooms to foster the teaching-learning process of computer programming, based on an user type taxonomy. The ultimate goal of this work is to identify and validate the most suitable gamification elements and mechanics for each user profile, providing case studies that illustrate their implementation. The main contribution of this work is to guide the design process of educational escape rooms in any domain, by considering the needs, preferences, and motivations of different user types.

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Web programming education is an important component of modern computer science curricula. Assessing students’ web programming skills can be time-consuming and challenging for educators. This paper introduces Webpal, an automated assessment tool for web programming exercises in entry-level courses. Webpal evaluates web applications coded in HTML, CSS, and Javascript, and provides feedback to students. This tool integrates with Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) through an API, allowing the creation, storage, and access to exercises while assessing student attempts based on the created exercises. The evaluation process comprises various subcomponents: static assessment, interface matching, functional testing, and feedback management. This approach aims to provide feedback that helps students overcome their challenges in web programming assignments. This paper also presents a demo showcasing the tool’s features and functionality in a simulated VLE environment.

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The paper discusses an ongoing project that aims to enhance the UX of teachers while using e-learning systems. Specifically, the project focuses on developing the teacher’s user interface (UI) for Agni, a web-based code playground for learning JavaScript. The goal is to design an intuitive UI with valuable features that will encourage more teachers to use the system. To achieve this goal, the paper explores the use of a headless Content Management System (CMS) called Strapi. The primary research question the paper seeks to answer is whether a headless CMS, specifically Strapi, can provide a good UX to teachers. A usability evaluation of the built-in Strapi UI for content creation and management reveals it to be generally consistent and user-friendly but challenging and unintuitive to create courses with programming exercises. As a result, the decision was made to develop a new teacher’s UI based on the existing Agni UI for students in an editable version. Once the development is complete, a new usability evaluation of the fully developed teacher’s UI will be conducted with the Strapi UI evaluation as a baseline for comparison.

Abstract
In the last decade, gamification has been a widely used mechanism to influence behavioral habits in users so that they are more positively involved in learning and business processes. There are many articles or applications that materialize this adoption by showing success stories. However, few are those who mention the dangers of its use. This article shares the main precautions to be taken when creating a gamified strategy, promoting the use of gamification design and evaluation frameworks, in order to create a balanced approach that meets the profiles of its users.