This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been

fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/RITA.2014.2340034, IEEE Revista Iberoamericana de Technologias del Aprendizaje

Engineering Education: Challenges for

Innovation
Teresa Restivo, Member, IEEE, Gustavo R. Alves
The 1st International Conference of the Portuguese
Society for Engineering Education (CISPEE2013) was
held in Porto, Portugal, from October 31 to November 1,
2013. Jointly organized by the Portuguese Society for
Engineering Education (SPEE) and the Polytechnic of
Porto School of Engineering (IPP/ISEP), CISPEE2013
gathered at ISEP more than 100 participants from
Portugal, Brazil, Czech Republic, Germany, Morocco,
Spain, Sweden, and United Kingdom, for discussing the
Challenges for Innovation in Engineering Education.
Referring to this topic, CISPEE2013 received around
80 full-paper submissions, which were subjected to a
blind review process with at least 3 independent reviewers
per paper. As a result of this whole process, 48
submissions were accepted for oral presentation, 19 were
proposed for poster presentation, 10 were rejected and 2
were disregarded for not complying with the conference
submission requirements.
The number of accepted papers allowed the program
chairs to define 4x2 sessions with oral presentations. Each
session included a final debate of 30 minutes, between the
presenters and the audience, moderated by the session
chair and co-chair, to draw up conclusions from the
presented papers. An additional session was devoted to
papers presented in Portuguese. Along these 9 sessions,
both participants and presenters had the opportunity to
discuss some of the present challenges in engineering
education, namely: an increased concern with didactical
and pedagogical aspects in Engineering Schools; how to
incorporate recent contributions from educational
sciences; how to benefit from an increased access to
diversified IT resources, inside the classroom, and the
large offer of online accessible educational resources; and
the need to recognize informal and non-formal learning
activities in STEM.
CISPEE2013 was sponsored by the Portuguese
Engineers Association (OE), the European Engineering
Education Society (SEFI), the International Society for
Engineering Education (IGIP), the Brazilian Engineering
Education Society (ABENGE), the American Society of
Civil Engineers (ASCE), and, finally, the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Following the technical co-sponsorship of IEEE, the
CISPEE2013 proceedings were indexed by the IEEE
Xplore Digital Library. Furthermore, a number of highquality papers were selected for publication in the
International Journal of Engineering Education (iJEP), in
the Latin-American Learning Technologies Journal
(Revista Iberoamericana de Tecnologas del Aprendizaje,
IEEE-RITA), in the journal of the Brazilian Engineering
Education Society (revista ABENGE), and, finally, in the
annual edition of Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT) applied to Engineering Education
(TICs Aplicadas para el aprendizaje de la Ingeniera,

TICAI2014). For IEEE-RITA, the program chairs

selected the paper entitled Mobile Personal Learning
Applied to a Software Engineering Subject, authored by
Miguel A. Conde-Gonzlez (University of Len, Spain)
and Francisco J. Garca-Pealvo (University of
Salamanca, Spain).
Maria Teresa Restivo has a degree in Solid State Physics and a
PhD in Engineering Sciences having research and teaching
activities
within
the
Automation,
Instrumentation and Control Group of the
Mechanical Engineering Department,
Faculty of Engineering, University of
Porto. She is author (co-author) of articles,
books and books chapters and served as
Guest Editor of different International
Journals. She is coordinator of the System
Integration & Process Automation
Research
Unit
at
IDMEC-FEUP,
integrated in the Associated Laboratory for
Energy, Transports and Aeronautics
(LAETA).
Dr. Restivo is EC member of the International Association for
Online Engineering (IAOE) and of the International Society for
Engineering Education (IGIP). She has the International
Engineering Educator (ING-PAED IGIP) qualification. She is
Institutional Member of the VIT@LIS network, of the ELTF
Task Force - EUNIS (European University Information Systems
Organization), of the "IT in Engineering Education" and "Tools
to Develop Higher Order Thinking Skills", both SPEE working
groups, and member of the European Centre for Women and
Technology ECWT.
Gustavo R. Alves graduated in 1991 and obtained an MSc and a
PhD in Computers and Electrical
Engineering in 1995 and 1999,
respectively, from the University of Porto,
Portugal. He is a professor at the
Polytechnic of Porto - School of
Engineering, since 1994. He authored or
co-authored +135 conference and journal
papers with referee process, 3 book
chapters, and co-edited a book, (with
Javier Garcia-Zubia, University of
Deusto, Spain), about "Using Remote
Labs in Education". He has also been
involved in 17 national & international research projects. His
research interests include engineering education, remote
experimentation, and design for debug & test.
Dr. Alves served as program co-chair of the 1st International
Conference of the Portuguese Society for Engineering Education
(CISPEE2013), as general chair of the 11th Remote Engineering
and Virtual Instrumentation (REV2014) conference, and also as a
PC member of several international conferences. He has also
served as Guest Editor for the international Journal of Online
Engineering (iJOE), the international Journal of Engineering
Pedagogy (iJEP), the IEEE Latin-American Learning
Technologies Journal, and the European Journal of Engineering
Education (EJEE).

1932-8540 (c) 2013 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See
http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/RITA.2014.2340034, IEEE Revista Iberoamericana de Technologias del Aprendizaje

1932-8540 (c) 2013 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See
http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.