Determination of the Smartness of a University Campus: the case study of Aveiro

This study introduces the reader to a “people centered” and multidimensional definition of the “smartness” of an ecosystem and to its bottom-up detection, that here has been specialized to the case of a learning ecosystem: a university campus. The methodology developed and validated by a European consortium composed by members of the ASLERD – Association for Smart Learning Ecosystem and Regional Development – has been used to benchmark the smartness of the Aveiro University, Portugal. Actors animating the learning processes and the campus’ life – bachelor students, master students and professors – have been asked to fill an electronic questionnaire to detect their perceptions. The quantitative and qualitative data analysis, reported in this paper, allows to identify the overall perceived degree of smartness of the Aveiro University and to highlight actors’ expectations on how to improve the smartness of the campus. The “affordance” of a smart territory is also presented and discussed, drawing on recent practices that promote rethinking universities based on the smartness concept.