Evaluating research and researchers by the journal impact factor: Is it better than coin flipping?

The journal impact factor (JIF) is the average of the number of citations of the papers published in a journal, calculated according to a specific formula; it is extensively used for the evaluation of research and researchers. The method assumes that all papers in a journal have the same scientific merit, which is measured by the JIF of the publishing journal. This implies that the number of citations measures scientific merits but the JIF does not evaluate each individual paper by its own number of citations. Therefore, in the comparative evaluation of two papers, the use of the JIF implies a risk of failure, which occurs when a paper in the journal with the lower JIF is compared to another with fewer citations in the journal with the higher JIF. To quantify this risk of failure, this study calculates the failure probabilities, taking advantage of the lognormal distribution of citations. In two journals whose JIFs are ten-fold different, the failure probability is low. However, in most cases when two papers are compared, the JIFs of the journals are not so different. Then, the failure probability can be close to 0.5, which is equivalent to evaluating by coin flipping.     

Flocking motion in swarms with limited sensing radius and heterogeneous input constraints

This paper addresses the flocking motion problem for swarms of agents with two restrictions: limited communication/detection ranges and different input constraints. In this problem, the distance between pairs of agents determines if a communication/detection link exists among them, while each agent has a different control action bound. We use the notion of proximity graph to model communication/detection between agents and provide distributed controllers designed for leaderless and leader-followers flocking motion scenarios. Our proposed designs preserve the connectivity of the proximity graph while the control effort satisfies the bound of each particular agent. Unlike previous results, our protocols take advantage of the group’s input heterogeneity to use agents with a greater capacity to compensate for neighbors that are less capable of meeting the group’s requirements. Additionally, our designs are based only on local state errors and are robust to non-modeled edge failures. To illustrate the effectiveness of our proposal, we use numerical simulations of different flocking scenarios.     

State of the library and information science blogosphere after social networks boom: A metric approach

A metric analysis of blogs on library and information science (LIS) between November 2006 and June 2009 indexed on the Libworm search engine characterizes the community's behavior quantitatively. An analysis of 1108 personal and corporate blogs with a total of 275,103 posts is used to calculate survival rate, production (number of posts published), and visibility via such indicators as links received, Technorati authority, and Google's PagePank. Over the study period, there was a 52% decrease in the number of active blogs. Despite the drop in production over this period, the average number of posts per blog remained constant (14 per month). The most representative blogs in the discipline are identified. The emergence of such platforms as Facebook and Twitter seems to have meant that both personal and corporate blogs have lost some of their prominence.     

Implementation of the flipped classroom and its longitudinal impact on improving academic performance

Educational technology research and development - The objective has been to know the impact of the flipped classroom methodology on the academic performance of students during their training...     

Errors of programming and ownership of the robot concept made by trainee kindergarten teachers during an induction training

Education and Information Technologies - Computational thinking in the educational environment has awaken a rising interest, having been included as part of the curricula from the very beginnings...     

Technologies in the education of children and teenagers with autism: evaluation and classification of apps by work areas

Education and Information Technologies - Mobile apps represent a resource with great potential for encouraging the development of many skills, given the high number of apps available and the quick...     

Novice teacher vertical professional development? Exploring teachers’ and coaches’ beliefs throughout a two-year induction program

Learning Environments Research - The pedagogical beliefs of novice teachers and their coaches throughout a two-year induction program and how those beliefs impact their induction experiences were...     

An evolving Learning Management System for new educational environments using 2.0 tools

The tools used in learning processes are in a continuous state of flux. One of the most significant changes is the application of Information and Communications technologies (ICTs) to educational contexts. This provides new possible ways to carry out learning activities, new learning services, the possibility to use new kinds of contents and activities, etc. However, ICTs have not provided as many advantages as they were supposed to, so changes are necessary. In this context, a new set of tools, Web 2.0, offers a new way to understand the Web, in which the user is the centre. Further, users can cooperate in order to define contents. This concept is also applied in technology-mediated learning but there are important problems when one tries to integrate such tools and concepts with existing systems. This paper explores the integration of these tools in traditional learning environments, the various possibilities and their advantages and drawbacks. After that, an interoperability scenario is described and two experiences are presented to show how 2.0 tools can be integrated in learning activities, and its effect in educational process.     

Research results of two personal learning environments experiments in a higher education institution

This paper focuses on institutionally powered personal learning environments (iPLEs). The concept of the iPLE can be seen as a way universities can incorporate learner-centred approach into the architecture of their technology-enhanced learning environments. The aim of this paper is to pose that there are other ways to learn complementary to virtual learning environments, such as using distributed Web 2.0 tools from personal learning environments (PLEs). With that aim in mind, this paper presents an exploratory study with two different iPLE configurations, analyses how they modify the learning–teaching process, and reports their perceived usefulness from the students' point of view. These two case studies were carried out by a research group of educational technology from a Spanish university in graduate and postgraduate courses. As reported by other case studies, the results revealed that students use the environment basically in the academic context and this usage is conceived as another time and effort requiring task. This fact can be observed in the low level iPLEs customization. The overall conclusions we can extract are, on the one hand, that the new environment to integrate informal and formal learning should be flexible and adaptable to the student's needs and preferences and, on the other hand, that academic tools might someday become personal tools.