Assessment of Web Content Accessibility Levels in Spanish Official Online Education Environments

Diversity-based designing, or the goal of ensuring that web-based information is accessible to as many diverse users as possible, has received growing international acceptance in recent years, with many countries introducing legislation to enforce it. This paper analyses web content accessibility levels in Spanish education portals according to the international guidelines established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Additionally, it suggests the calculation of an inaccessibility rate as a tool for measuring the degree of non-compliance with WAI Guidelines 2.0 as well as illustrating the significant gap that separates people with disabilities from digital education environments (with a 7.77% average). A total of twenty-one educational web portals with two different web depth levels (42 sampling units) were assessed for this purpose using the automated analysis tool Web Accessibility Test 2.0 (TAW, for its initials in Spanish). The present study reveals a general trend towards non-compliance with the technical accessibility recommendations issued by the W3C-WAI group (97.62% of the websites examined present mistakes in Level A conformance). Furthermore, despite the increasingly high number of legal and regulatory measures about accessibility, their practical application still remains unsatisfactory. A greater level of involvement must be assumed in order to raise awareness and enhance training efforts towards accessibility in the context of collective Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), since this represents not only a necessity but also an ethical, social, political and legal commitment to be assumed by society.

Validación del Cuestionario de evaluación de la calidad de cursos virtuales adaptado a MOOC

Los Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC) son una modalidad de formación virtual que está ya presente en el panorama educativo actual y que responde a una concepción determinada de e-learning. Las universidades están integrando como parte de su oferta formativa este tipo de formación o, al menos, se está debatiendo si se integra o no. Ante esto, se hace necesario calibrar cuáles deben ser sus características con el fin de configurar un tipo de formación virtual de calidad. Se considera que son necesarios instrumentos que avalen la calidad de los MOOC desde diferentes perspectivas, en este caso la pedagógica, ya que de ello dependerá el éxito y la consolidación de este tipo de e-learning. El objetivo del presente estudio ha sido, pues, validar un cuestionario para la evaluación pedagógica de los MOOC adaptando el cuestionario de evaluación de cursos virtuales (Arias, 2007). Se ha analizado la validez y fiabilidad de dicho cuestionario a través de un análisis factorial de componentes principales con rotación Varimax. Se concluye que bastaría con introducir adaptaciones en la relación de dimensiones propuestas en este cuestionario que tuviera en cuenta las especificidades de los MOOC, ya que estos no pueden analizarse única y exclusivamente desde la óptica general del e-learning anterior a los MOOC. Así, las dimensiones en las cuales se basa dicho cuestionario son: 1) la calidad de la comunicación y los elementos multimedia de los cursos masivos en línea; 2) la coherencia curricular de los cursos y el grado de adaptación al usuario y 3) la calidad de su planificación didáctica.

Propuesta para potenciar la educación para la paz en la enseñanza superior por medio de actividades orales cooperativas

La educación para la paz ha despertado especial interés en contextos en los que los valores asociados a ésta y los derechos humanos se están viendo cercenados. En Europa, este fenómeno puede equipararse a la situación de crisis económica en la que se encuentran numerosos países. Este artículo pretende ser una contribución a la enseñanza universitaria activa que esté basada en competencias sociales y enmarcada en los principios de la educación para la paz. En este sentido, este trabajo presenta una propuesta de actividades que contribuyen a potenciar los principios y valores que propone la educación para la paz. Se expone el modo de llevar a cabo actividades orales transversales que fomenten la educación para la paz en dos asignaturas de estudios de grado de la Universidad de Alicante, Lengua Inglesa III y Lingüística General I. Como resultado de su implementación, se señala que esta metodología fomenta la adquisición de competencias sociales del alumnado entre las que destacan la resolución de conflictos, la escucha activa o la cooperación.

Evaluation of online tools as didactic resource in the university education

Recently, many efforts have been made in the academic world to adapt the new degrees to the new European Higher Education Area (EHEA). New technologies have been the most important factor to carry out this adaptation. In particular, the tools 2.0 have been spreading quickly, not just the Web 2.0, but even in all the educational levels. Nevertheless, it is now necessary to evaluate whether all these efforts and all the changes, carried out in order to obtain improved academic performance among students, have provided good results. Therefore, the aim of this paper is focused on studying the impact of the implementation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in a subject belonging to a Master from the University of Alicante in the academic year (2010-2011). In special, it is an elective course called "Advanced Visual Ergonomics" from the Master of Clinical Optometry and Vision. The methodology used to teach this course differs from the traditional one in many respects. For example, one of the resources used for the development of this course is a blog developed specifically to coordinate a series of virtual works, whose purpose is that the student goes into specific aspects of the current topic. Next, the student participates in an active role by writing a personal assessment on the blog. However, in the course planning, there is an attendance to lessons, where the teacher presents certain issues in a more traditional way, that is, with a lecture supported with audiovisual materials, such as materials generated in powerpoint. To evaluate the quality of the results achieved with this methodology, in this work the personal assessment of the students, who have completed this course during this academic year, are collected. In particular, we want to know their opinion about the used resources, as well as the followed methodology. The tool used to collect this information was a questionnaire. This questionnaire evaluates different aspects of the course: a general opinion, quality of the received information, satisfaction about the followed methodology and the student´s critical awareness. The design of this questionnaire is very important to get conclusive information about the methodology followed in the course. The questionnaire has to have an adequate number of questions; whether it has many questions, it might be boring for the student who would pay no enough attention. The questions should be well-written, with a clear structure and message, to avoid confusion and an ambiguity. The questions should be objectives, without any suggestion for a desired answer. In addition, the questionnaire should be interesting to encourage the student´ s interest. In conclusion, this questionnaire developed for this subject provided good information to evaluate whether the methodology was a useful tool to teach "Advanced Visual Ergonomics". Furthermore, the student´s opinion collected by this questionnaire might be very helpful to improve this didactic resource.

Assessing participation in online discussion forums: a proposal for multidimensional analysis

This paper aims to assess the discussion forums being used in the programme Especialista Universitario online sobre Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación, taught at the University of Alicante, on the basis of the analysis model suggested by Kay (2004). In such a model, it is essential to represent graphically the forum activity so that the visual representation may improve analysis. This research has allowed reaching results which define the forum activity and has contributed with a proposal for multi analysis in the area of assessing participation in communication within online discussion forums.

ConfChem Conference on A Virtual Colloquium to Sustain and Celebrate IYC 2011 Initiatives in Global Chemical Education—The Global Experiment of the IYC2011: Creating Online Communities for Education and Science

The Global Experiment, Water: A Chemical Solution, was one of the flagship activities of the International Year of Chemistry (IYC). During the virtual colloquium of the spring 2012 online ConfChem conference, the main results of this year-long experiment were presented and discussed online for a week. Some of the main conclusions of the virtual conversations relate to the benefits of creating online communities of people sharing similar interests, the use of online educational platforms to gather massive amounts of data, and specific questions about the development of this IYC initiative. The activities of the global water experiment (GWE) were designed by a team of experts and the protocols are available online on the GWE Web site. The results were shown in one interactive world map that allowed students to learn about data visualization, validation, and interpretation. The feedback obtained from the participants of the GWE and later by the contributors of the virtual colloquium was very positive. Many participants asked specific and technical questions about the development of this experiment, while others excitedly endorsed the convenience of these large open-access activities to promote chemistry worldwide. The estimate is that over 2 million people took part in the GWE during the IYC. This communication summarizes one of the invited papers to the ConfChem online conference: A Virtual Colloquium to Sustain and Celebrate IYC 2011 Initiatives in Global Chemical Education, held from May 18 to June 29, 2012 and hosted by the ACS DivCHED Committee on Computers in Chemical Education and the IUPAC Committee on Chemistry Education.

SERS Active Surface in Two Steps, Patterning and Metallization

Robust and reproducible metallized nano/microstructured surfaces of polymeric surfaces have been successfully prepared by direct laser interference patterning (DLIP) of commercial polymeric films followed by sputtering of metallic thin films. The SERS spectra for 2-thioaniline adsorbed on a structured polycarbonate surfaces covered with a gold or platinum film showed a ca. three order of magnitude enhancement over a flat surface with the same metal film. The method here reported is suitable for mass production of substrates for SERS since large areas (several cm2) can be structured in ca. 1–5 s.

Validation of a Spanish version of the Distance Education Learning Environments Survey (DELES) in Spain

The aim of this study was to examine the validity of the Spanish version of the Distance Education Learning Environments Survey (Sp-DELES). This instrument assesses students’ perceptions of virtual learning environments using six scales: Instructor Support, Student Interaction and Collaboration, Personal Relevance, Authentic Learning, Active Learning, and Autonomy. Further, the Sp-DELES includes an additional scale that assesses students’ Satisfaction with their classes. The original DELES has been used in at least 27 independent studies with strong reliability and validity. For this study, we sampled 265 students from the University of Alicante enrolled in various hybrid and distance education courses taught by the Department of Health Psychology. We analysed the Sp-DELES for validity using principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation, and for reliability using Cronbach’s alpha. The Sp-DELES exhibited good reliability (Cronbach’s alpha for the scales ranging from 0.86 to 0.97) and the original six-factor structure was replicated and accounted for 72.9 % of the total variance. Overall the results are consistent with those of the original English-language version of the instrument. The Sp-DELES has proven to be a reliable and valid instrument for assessing psychosocial learning environments in tertiary-level hybrid and distance-education settings.

Controversy between curriculum design and curriculum development of online "highly specialized" education in the field of construction

Nowadays, on a global level, the Higher Education System has a complex and broad horizon of curricular tools to use in the teaching and learning process. In addition to these new educational instruments, full of possibilities, we face specific socio-economic conditions that affect in a significantly way the Curriculum Development in certain knowledge areas (areas traditionally built on a methodology based on a physical presence of students in the classroom). Some areas such as Restoration, Rehabilitation or Construction Pathologies, and the construction sector in general, require very defined and particular knowledge that only a small number of experts claim as specialized training. All these aspects condition the teaching methodology performed in a physical classroom at a university campus (the only option used until recent years) and made us consider the integration of online teaching in these areas too. The present work shows the teaching methodology used for the development of two online courses, where we offer distance learning for "highly specialized" formation in the Edification area (an area where traditionally there was only classroom training). At the beginning, both courses were designed by classroom training, but got a really small number of applications due to the specialized topic proposed. Later, we proposed a "Curriculum Redesign" of the contents, offering an online modality, which implied a significant demand both within and outside the university area. A notable feature of this educational experience is the great spectrum opened for attendees of both courses in the online version. This situation improved significantly the "Curriculum Development" for the student and implied an interesting new proposal on the offered contents and materials (what would have been really difficult to get in a face to face classroom). In conclusion, the absence of certain types of specialized contents in the academic university curricula makes essential to raise new methodologies to save the gap in this area through additional training courses as those analyzed in this paper. Thus, our experience opens a debate on the appropriateness of implementing online training in relation to the face to face training in constructive content subjects and, especially, presents a new scheme, not without controversy, for the curriculum design.

Estudio de caso de los sMOOC y su pedagogía en el contexto online

En un contexto dominado por las nuevas tecnologías, los MOOCs parecen posicionarse como una alternativa o complemento a la formación tradicional. Se observa sin embargo, que la metodología empleada por este tipo de cursos masivos, no difiere de la comúnmente utilizada en el aula. Este artículo evalúa y describe una nueva tipología de MOOC, denominada Social MOOC, la cual se presenta como disruptiva en cuanto a pedagogía se refiere. A través de la plataforma ECO Learning, se analiza de forma exhaustiva mediante un estudio de caso, la pedagogía empleada y el rol que asume el estudiante en el primer sMOOC llevado a cabo que tuvo lugar durante los meses de marzo y abril de 2015. Se concluye, que la pedagogía empleada en esta nueva versión social de los ya citados MOOC, es innovadora tanto dentro como fuera del contexto digital. Los estudiantes asumen un papel muy activo y la comunicación se torna de un carácter bidireccional entre el facilitador y los mismos.