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This chapter presents a comprehensive view of the main activities and findings of a research project entitled TRACER-Portuguese Public Higher Education Use of Communication Technologies, which focused on how the information about the use of Communication Technologies in Higher Education Institutions can be collected, systematized, processed, and deployed to stakeholders. The project was carried out between 2011 and 2014 and its main results are a consolidated proposal of an analysis model to address the use of Communication Technologies in Higher Education institutions, as well as the U-TRACER® tool. This Web-based tool provides support to the process of collecting, processing, and deployment of data related with the use of Communication Technologies in a specific Higher Education or in a group of institutions, based on institutional or geographical criteria.

This chapter describes a research which main purpose was identifying and characterizing the use of Communication Technologies by Portuguese Public Higher Education Institutions to support learning activities. An analysis model was created and used to develop a nationwide online survey used to collect data from students, teachers and institutional managers. The results show that institutional policies and resources are in place and being used to support learning; learning management systems and interpersonal communication technologies are intensely used and widely adopted; and that there are gender differences as far as the students' use of Communication Technologies is concerned. The results of this study provide a useful insight on the use of Communication Technologies by Portuguese Public Higher Education Institutions and give valuable information for ongoing decision making processes regarding the institutional adoption and development of learning models that take advantage of these technologies.

This chapter presents an overview on information and communication overload. The theme is contextualized and the main concepts are discussed based on the published literature. The individual, the organizational and the social perspectives are considered. To deepen this discussion, the authors developed a bibliometric analysis, which demonstrated the steady increase of interest in this topic, apparently enhanced by new developments in information technology. These technologies have presented solutions for some problems, but at the same time they have raised new issues of information overload. The bibliometric analysis also shows that many of these new issues are communication issues, contributing to justify our argument that, currently, the problems of information overload and communication overload are interrelated.