Rafael Pedraza-Jiménez

InterMediActor: an environment for instructional content design based on competences

This paper describes the basic architecture and functional principles of a new instructional design system called InterMediActor (IMA). IMA provides an environment for instructional content design, production and reuse and student evaluation that is based on the decomposition of the learning objectives in a hierarchical structure of competences. The process of content production and learning in a competence-based systems is described, and the main advantages and differences in relation to other proposals, like SCORM and EML, are discussed.

Updating controlled vocabularies by analysing query logs

Purpose – Controlled vocabularies play an important role in information retrieval. Numerous studies have shown that conceptual searches based on vocabularies are more effective than keyword searches, at least in certain contexts. Consequently, new ways must be found to improve controlled vocabularies. The purpose of this paper is to present a semi-automatic model for updating controlled vocabularies through the use of a text corpus and the analysis of query logs. Design/methodology/approach – An experimental development is presented in which, first, the suitability of a controlled vocabulary to a text corpus is examined. The keywords entered by users to access the text corpus are then compared with the descriptors used to index it. Finally, both the query logs and text corpus are processed to obtain a set of candidate terms to update the controlled vocabulary. Findings – This paper describes a model applicable both in the context of the text corpus of an online academic journal and to repositories and int...

A semi-automatic indexing system based on embedded information in HTML documents

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe and evaluate the tool DigiDoc MetaEdit which allows the semi-automatic indexing of HTML documents. The tool works by identifying and suggesting keywords from a thesaurus according to the embedded information in HTML documents. This enables the parameterization of keyword assignment based on how frequently the terms appear in the document, the relevance of their position, and the combination of both. Design/methodology/approach – In order to evaluate the efficiency of the indexing tool, the descriptors/keywords suggested by the indexing tool are compared to the keywords which have been indexed manually by human experts. To make this comparison a corpus of HTML documents are randomly selected from a journal devoted to Library and Information Science. Findings – The results of the evaluation show that there: first, is close to a 50 per cent match or overlap between the two indexing systems, however, if you take into consideration the related terms and the na...

Newsonomics in the Interactive Era: Dimensions of Sustainability in the News Media

Newsonomics, the discipline founded by Ken Doctor, expert news media analyst, examines the trends characterizing the transformation of journalism in the digital age. In this chapter, we focus our attention on some of these tendencies in our critical analysis of the sustainability of the firms in this industry that have opted to innovate and invest in new interactive formats. We understand that a book of this kind, dedicated as it is, to interactive communication, must not lose sight of the fact that the news media form part of an industry and that this industry must be sustainable, regardless of the ownership model employed by each firm. In this chapter, we provide a general overview of the main dimensions of sustainably in the news media. To do so, we draw primarily on sector reports published by bodies of high repute and illustrate our discussion with some of the best known cases. One of the key ideas underpinning our analysis is that new interactive platforms—in any of the formats examined elsewhere in this volume—offer a whole range of new incentives for readers. These, in turn, are exploited—or at least should be—by news media firms to increase their readership, and to build subscriber loyalty in the case of firms opting for a paywall business model. Over the following pages we review the various dimensions that Newsonomics can take—with The New York Times serving as an obvious success story—via the adoption of different digital communication formats. We also look at the new experiences and the new business models that are currently being considered by members of the news media industry for future adoption.

Analysis and evaluation of techniques for the extraction of classes in the ontology learning process

This paper analyzes and evaluates, in the context of Ontology learning, some techniques to identify and extract candidate terms to classes of a taxonomy. Besides, this work points out some inconsistencies that may be occurring in the preprocessing of text corpus, and proposes techniques to obtain good terms candidate to classes of a taxonomy.