Nuno Escudeiro

Abstract
Over the last years, there has been an increase in hearing-impaired students who use sign language as their main form of communication attending higher education institutions around the world. The knowledge that their comprehension of texts is reduced due to sentence structure differences causes a need for more solutions to improve communication and support students in environments where they are unable to be accompanied by sign interpreters. This article details the improvements and current structure of the VirtualSign platform, a bidirectional sign language to text translation tool that has been in development since 2015. The platform is divided into two main parts, sign to text and text to sign, and both components are described and explained. The solution has received positive feedback on several tests and a pilot experiment, and is being developed with partnerships with sign interpreters from six different European countries. Some planned improvements and future functionalities for the tool are also mentioned and detailed. © 2019 IEEE.

Abstract
Deaf students, who use sign language as their mother language, continuously experience difficulties to communicate with non-deaf in their daily lives. This is a severe handicap in education settings seriously jeopardizing deaf people chances to progress in their professional career. Deaf people's comprehension of texts is limited due to grammar differences between sign and oral languages. There is a need to improve the communication between deaf and non-deaf and to support deaf students in environments where they are unable to be accompanied by sign interpreters. This article details the improvements and current structure of the VirtualSign platform, a bidirectional sign language to text translation tool in development since 2015. The platform has two main components, sign to text and text to sign, that are both described. Translation from text to sign relies on a 3D avatar. Translation from sign to text relies on a set of data gloves and Kinect. In this paper we discuss the relevance of different types of data gloves. VirtualSign is being developed in cooperation with the deaf communities from six different European countries and Brazil. This solution to support deaf students in educational settings has received positive feedback on several tests and pilot experiments. Some planned improvements and future functionalities for the tool are also mentioned and detailed. © 2013 IEEE.

Abstract
With the rise of usage in digital content in education, deaf and blind communities face communication barriers which as a result makes education less inclusive. These barriers do not allow them to integrate within the larger scholarly communities as most tools used for information dissemination remain inaccessible to them. This paper presents BDC-API (Blind/Deaf Communications API), a free-to-use modular toolkit that will ease accessibility for the blind and deaf communities to digital education content. This content includes the use cases of Massive Online Open Courses and Serious Games used in education. BDC-API incorporates the use of state of the art technologies such as, 3D sign language translator, grammar translation, voice recognition and text-to-speech. This paper demonstrates in greater detail, how these technologies culminate in the creation of an API ready to use for any educational digital content and how the BDC-API can ensure higher quality of digital content.

Abstract
Modern economy requires engineers to excel in collaborative and communication skills at an international setting. However, these competences are not usually addressed in most engineering curricula. In the Multinational Undergraduate Team Work course, MUTW, students develop their capstone project as members of an international team while working at their home institutions. Team members are geographically spread to assure heterogeneous teams and to promote international cooperation. This paradigm can be applied in any project/internship course unit. The results from the pilot editions that ran between 2009 and 2011 support our initial hypothesis that MUTW significantly promotes students' soft skills without requiring costly and time consuming changes to prior degree curricula.

Abstract
In the last decade blended learning activities become increasingly popular in the education. According to the current assumption that blended learning equates to the mixture of on-line conferencing and traditional face-to-face learning and contacting. This approach is useful as well as for teaching at institutions as well as for the mobility of students and teachers. Technological possibilities are especially important, while they enable the mobility of students and teachers, in the cases like economic reasons, time constraints, family needs or any other reasons. Without technological supported mobility, those participants would not be able to experience exchange. By mixing technologies and different learning approaches, much has changed in education. Among the new additional challenges of today's education are cross cultural challenges and preparation. Considering this awareness, project experiences and practices in various projects related to blended learning and cultural issues, we will present our suggestions and lessons learned in cross cultural preparation.