Key competencies to become an e-Learning successful instructor Diogo Casanova, Antonio Moreira & Nilza Costa 1 Department of Education, Research Centre for Didactics and Technology in Teacher Education, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal, diogo@ua.pt Abstract. Research has been conducted in order to design frameworks for Higher Education (HE) teaching competencies. These studies have been developed with the aim of helping to understand what skills, attributes, and roles are required from HE teachers. In this paper we aim to review some of these research studies with the purpose of understanding teaching roles and create clusters of competencies required for teaching in HE. This study will set the ground for developing a reference framework for the evaluation of teaching competencies of HE teachers in Portugal, especially when using ICT as a tool to support learning, and identify continuous professional development training strategies that can be inducted to help improve the teaching and learning experience in HE. Keywords: Competencies; ICT, new teaching roles; Higher Education; student centred learning 1 Introduction Both the Lisbon Strategy and the Bologna Process have brought enormous challenges to the educational systems in general, and to Higher Education (HE) in particular. Today, we acknowledge a growing awareness of HE institutions and educational stakeholders about issues of pedagogy, academic success, innovative teaching and learning strategies, quality assurance, teachers’ training and ICT use (Isabel Huet & Costa, 2006). This growing awareness of HE institutions and stakeholders bring more responsibilities to the teaching task, leading faculty to engage in new roles that are very different from the traditional ones. The educational reforms taking place in Europe have been promoting a re-design of the curricula to a more student-centred curriculum (Reichert & Tauch, 2005) where students actively engage in the learning tasks and activities, taking responsibility for their own learning: the student is seen as an active, self-