Viviana Fernández Marcial

Quality assessment of Spanish universities' web sites focused on the European Research Area

SummaryThis work has analyzed and evaluated the dissemination of research done at Spanish universities through the World Wide Web (WWW) in order to obtain a map of the visibility of the information available on this research and to propose measures for improving the quality of this diffusion, all within the social and institutional context of the European Area for Higher Education. The methodology applied in the study has used both qualitative and quantitative research methods to obtain some quality indicators on the dissemination of university research. The object of study consists of a sample of 19 Spanish universities, chosen according to their representativeness by Autonomous Community and their administrative and scientific weight. The process of defining indicators, both qualitative and quantitative, as well as the collection and analysis of data, are explained. The results give us a detailed panorama of the state of the art of the visibility of information on research in the web pages of selected universities. This has allowed us to make certain proposals for improvement that can contribute to the excellence of its dissemination.

Use of free on-line machine translation for interactive cross-language question answering

Free on-line machine translation systems are employed more and more by Internet users. In this paper we have explored the use of these systems for Cross-Language Question Answering, in two aspects: in the formulation of queries and in the presentation of information. Two topic-document language pairs were used, Spanish-English and Spanish-French. For each of these, two groups of users were created, depending on the level of reading skills in document language. When machine translation of the queries was used directly in the search, the number of correct answers was quite high. Users only corrected 8% of the translations proposed. As regards the possibility of using machine translation to translate into Spanish the text passages shown to the user, we expected the search of the users with little knowledge of the target language to improve notably, but we found that this possibility was of little help in finding the correct answers for the questions posed in the experiment.

Lessons on Information Literacy Research: A Portuguese Experience

From 2007 to 2010 we conducted a project titled Information Literacy in the European Higher Education Area: Study of Information Skills in Portugal (eLit.pt) that was funded by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation and coordinated by the University of Porto. The aim of the project was to understand how the university students face the information competences required by the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Another aim was to understand the connection between information literacy and information behavior. Thus, we designed a theoretical model (e-lit model) which was the base for planning a survey. The study was performed on a national scale, allowing to compare regions with different levels of development. The sample, approximately 2000 students from high school and university, allowed comparing their informational competences. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. In this paper we present our experience emphasizing the importance of developing effective methods for IL research.