From 12 to 16 February, Marlene Rosa, researcher in the area of health technologies applied to neuroscience and rehabilitation, was at the University of Lleida, as part of an interinstitutional visit. Professor Jorge Moya Higueras, researcher in the field of neuropsychology at the Faculty of Education, Psychology and Social Work, hosted Marlene for that week.

He has developed studies and pedagogical interventions, inspired by the analogue game and he was also at ciTechCare to share their projects, in February 2023, in a ‘Science swing’ session.

The ciTechCare researcher and coordinator of an action-research team in the field of gamification had the possibility of meeting with the team of lecturers and researchers and talk about “Teaching and research synergies between Polytechnic of Leiria and the University of Leida”, as well as presenting the work of her team “Neuroemotional responses of the person with dementia to analogue games”.

During the week, it was possible to share new methodologies of game analysis in frail populations, to consider to perform multicenter studies, to know opportunities for training programs in partnership and foster this interinstitutional relationship between professionals who investigate the cognitive, emotional, educational and behavioral impact of board games and to better understand how they can contribute to a more integrated educational system in society.

The connection between the Polytechnic of Leiria and the University of Lleida has been increasing since 2022, as both have the same purpose of developing analogue games with pedagogical and therapeutic characteristics. The set of several meetings since that time, resulted in the monitoring of the doctoral stay of Nuria Barrull, a student tutored by Professor Jorge Higueras, who was in Portugal for a month.

Also in this week of mobility, Marlene had the opportunity to share and inform about a pioneering pedagogical project at ESSLEI, Polytechnic of Leiria, funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, called “Gym2BeKind”, which aims to develop social skills and enable active and innovative training of communication skills in students of the School of Health Sciences (ESSLei) of the Polytechnic of Leiria, using modern board games and dynamic/group simulations. The week ended up with some bilateral presentations of PhD projects, bringing together students from both teams.