Academic quality measurement: A multivariate approach

This paper applies a new quality measurement methodology to measure the quality of the postgraduate courses. The methodology we propose is the Academic Quality Measurement (AQM). The model is applied to several simulated data sets where we know the true value of the parameters of the model. A nonparametric model, based in Nearest Neighbours combined with Restricted Least Squared methods, is developed in which students evaluate the overall academic programme quality and a set of dimensions or attributes that determine this quality. The database comes from a Spanish Public University post graduate programme. Among the most important conclusion we say the methodology presented in this work has the following advantages: Knowledge of the attribute weights allow the ordering of the attributes according to their relative importance to the student, showing the key factors for improving quality. Student weights can be related to student characteristics to make market segmentation directly linked to quality objectives. The relative strengths and weaknesses of the service (high educations) can be determined by comparing the mean value of the attributes of the service to the values of other companies (Benchmark process or SWOT analysis).Quality Measurement, Postgraduate Programme, Nonparametric Model.

Academic quality measurement: A multivariate approach

This paper applies a new quality measurement methodology to measure the quality of the postgraduate courses. Themethodology we propose is the Academic Quality Measurement (AQM). The model is applied to several simulated data setswhere we know the true value of the parameters of the model. A nonparametric model, based in Nearest Neighbours combinedwith Restricted Least Squared methods, is developed in which students evaluate the overall academic programme quality and a setof dimensions or attributes that determine this quality. The database comes from a Spanish Public University post graduateprogramme. Among the most important conclusion we say the methodology presented in this work has the following advantages:Knowledge of the attribute weights allow the ordering of the attributes according to their relative importance to the student,showing the key factors for improving quality. Student weights can be related to student characteristics to make marketsegmentation directly linked to quality objectives. The relative strengths and weaknesses of the service (high educations) can bedetermined by comparing the mean value of the attributes of the service to the values of other companies (Benchmark process orSWOT analysis).Premio al mejor “Working Paper” del Departamento de Economía Financiera y Contabilidad de la Universidad Pablo de Olavide (edición 2011)

Package ‘SixSigma’

This package contains functions and utilities to performStatistical Analyses in the Six Sigma way. Through the DMAICcycle (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control), you can manage several Quality Management studies: Gage R&R, CapabilityAnalysis, Control Charts, Loss Function Analysis, etc. Dataframes used in the book ‘‘Six Sigma with R’’ (Springer, 2012) are also included in the package

A New Approach for Academic Quality Measurement

This paper applies a new quality measurement methodology to measure the quality of the postgraduate courses. The methodology we propose is the Academic Quality Measurement (AQM). The model is applied to several simulated data sets where we know the true value of the parameters of the model. A nonparametric model, based in Nearest Neighbours combined with Restricted Least Squared methods, is developed in which students evaluate the overall academic programme quality and a set of dimensions or attributes that determine this quality. The database comes from a Spanish Public University post graduate programme. Among the most important conclusion we say the methodology presented in this work has the following advantages: Knowledge of the attribute weights allow the ordering of the attributes according to their relative importance to the student, showing the key factors for improving quality. Student weights can be related to student characteristics to make market segmentation directly linked to quality objectives. The relative strengths and weaknesses of the service (high educations) can be determined by comparing the mean value of the attributes of the service to the values of other companies (Benchmark process or SWOT analysis)

Six Sigma as a quality improvement tool for academic programs

In this work, we present a methodology for the design and improvement of academic programs based on Six Sigma. Six Sigma is a methodology for quality improvement [ISO 13053-1] well known in industrial environments that is being more and more used in services and administration areas. The proposed methodology is applied to the Internal Systems Quality Assurance (ISQA) in Information Technology and Communications (ITC) Schools, but it is easily generalizable to other schools and faculties. The Spanish National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (ANECA for its Spanish acronym) sets the guidelines for improving the ISQAs, but ANECA does not indicate how to implement them. Currently, there is a lack of methodologies to create and/or improve quality control systems for teaching and associated services. It is therefore necessary to explore other ways. As a first contribution, we are using successful quality improvement methodologies at the business level for academic purposes. Even though there are various methods for improving the quality of processes (EFQM, Kaizen, etc.), Six Sigma has proven to be among the best ones. Indeed, Six Sigma successfully adapted the scientific method in order to be straightforwardly applied to process improvement within organisations. Our second contribution, probably the most important one, is the development of a typology catalogue gathering the developed procedures structure. Such catalogue allows to systematically detect types of procedures and structures, representing by itself a novel tool. The remaining contributions are explicit descriptions of procedures for a particular ITC School. These descriptions showcase a comprehensive practical application of the proposed methodology. The integrated system developed in this work organises the procedures into three areas: strategic, operational and cross-cutting

Modern Society Challenges: Youth Communication in Instagram

With the emergence and further development of network communication, the number of participants in this process began to increase. The youth turned out to be especially receptive and open to such modern manifestations of communication. It is the youth who actively and easily joins the use of social networks in their lives, where they mainly work. The article is devoted to the consideration of the main theoretical and research approaches to the problem of modern challenges of society - communication of young people on Instagram. The authors noted that one of the main signs of the development of modern society is the rapid formation of computer information technologies, which gives a modern person an opportunity to study, discuss problems that bother him, meet new people and communicate with friends, use the unlimited possibilities of the Internet. One of such information media is the social youth network -  Instagram, which can be called one of the best, most convenient and interesting. The article notes that it is young people who master network communication better and use it more often than other age groups, because they are at the forefront of new transformations, and therefore the study of their communicative practices seems to be the most significant and promising

Estructura factorial y estabilidad de un cuestionario sobre la calidad de un programa de postgrado.

In this work we describe an instrument based on the use of a factor analysis technique in order to measure the quality of education within a Postgraduate degree offered by a public Spanish university. We showed that the instrument has satisfactory psychometric properties (reliability and validity). Regarding the factorial solution, three main dimensions have been determined, namely: importance given to the subject; educational resources and knowledge of the subject (previous and posterior). It is important to remark that these three dimensions were consistently detected in all the factorial analyses performed (total sample and separate academic years). These three dimensions should be considered as fundamental when designing an instrument to evaluate educational quality. These findings may be taken as a basis for the design of future strategies for the evaluation of educational quality on other type of degrees within the higher education area.En este trabajo se describe un instrumento basado en el uso de una técnica de análisis factorial con el fin de medir la calidad de la educación a través de una muestra de estudiantes de postgrado de una universidad pública española. El instrumento tiene unas aceptables propiedades psicométricas (fiabilidad y validez). En cuanto a la solución factorial, tres dimensiones principales se han determinado: la importancia dada a la materia; recursos educativos y conocimiento de la materia (anterior y posterior). Es importante destacar que estas tres dimensiones se han detectado consistentemente en todo el análisis factorial: muestra total y cursos separados. Estas tres dimensiones deben ser consideradas como aspectos fundamentales en el diseño de un instrumento para evaluar la calidad educativa. Estos hallazgos pueden ser tomados como base para el diseño de estrategias futuras para la evaluación de la calidad educativa en otro tipo de estudios dentro del área de la educación superior

Análisis de microarrays, preproceso

Como consecuencia del éxito de la tecnología de microarrays, aparecen en la literatura un gran número de experimentos realizados con los mismos. Sin embargo, los problemas de estandarización y las numerosas fuentes de variabilidad hacen necesarias técnicas de validación a posteriori. Por este motivo se ha tratado de estudiar cómo influye en la selección de genes diferencialmente expresados algunas de las principales técnicas de preproceso. Muchos de los estudios realizados para comparar estas técnicas, se han llevado a cabo sobre experimentos cuyos resultados óptimos se conocen a priori con el fin de intentar determinar cuál presenta mayor precisión. En nuestro caso no conocemos el resultado correcto a priori y lo que se ha realizado es un análisis comparativo de los resultados obtenidos en cada caso con el fin de poder predecir el comportamiento a priori de cada una de las técnicas analizadas en función de diversos factores como distribución de los datos iniciales, patrones de expresión objeto de interés, presencia de outliers, etc. Se han aplicado tres técnicas de preproceso sobre un experimento de microarrays. Las técnicas aplicadas son GCRMA, MBEI y MAS5. Se han encontrado en nuestros datos principalmente tres patrones de expresión en aquellos genes diferencialmente expresados y se ha demostrado estadísticamente que existe una asociación entre la técnica de preproceso utilizada y el patrón predominante en la misma. Esta tendencia se ha relacionado con la eficiencia en la detección de valores atípicos y con la magnitud de cambio detectada con cada una de ellas. Por el momento, no se ha podido establecer un estadístico significativo a la hora de confirmar la concordancia entre los tres métodos tras la selección de genes diferencialmente expresados.Following the success of microarray technology, in the literature there is a large number of experiments made with them. However, the problems of standardization and the many sources of variability make it necessary posteriori validation techniques. For this reason, we have tried to study how the selection of genes influence some key preprocessing techniques. Many of the studies conducted to compare these techniques have been carried out on experiments which optimal results are known a priori to try to determine which has greater accuracy. In our case, we do not know the correct result a priori and what has been accomplished is a comparative analysis of the results obtained in each case in order to predict a priori the behavior of each of the techniques discussed in terms of various factors as initial data distribution, expression patterns object of interest, the presence of outliers, and so on. Three techniques have been applied on the preprocessing on a microarray experiment. The techniques are GCRMA, MAS5 and MBEI. In our data there have been found mainly three patterns of expression in those genes expressed and have been shown statistically that there is an association between the pre-processing technique used and the predominant pattern in it. This trend is related to efficiency in the detection of outliers and the magnitude of change detected with each of them. So far, it has not been able to establish a statistically significant in confirming the agreement between the three methods after the selection of differentially expressed genes

Step by step, building a virtual exchange program between five european universities

It is commonly claimed that the Exchange program ERASMUS (European Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students) can be regarded as one of the biggest successes of the European Union (EU) educational policy in the past years. Since its launching in 1987, more than 3,000,000 students and teachers have participated in their programmes. However, the majority of the participants have been undergraduate students, being the presence of postgraduate students merely testimonial (something that the Bologna Process aims at changing). One of the main reason for this phenomenon may be that, as more mature people, postgraduate students might have more restrictive family, professional and/or work ties. With this motivation in mind, we proposed the EU our VRTUOSI project, www.vrtuosi.org, within the Virtual Campus methodological framework of the EU Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP). Ours was one of the five proposals chosen by the EU in the 2009 announcement. On the other hand, quality is an important issue within the European educational framework, as only outstanding programs will benefit from European and national funds and will call attention of a larger number of students, ensuring their survival in a very competitive environment. In this regard, we provide details of the design, development and implementation of a Six-Sigma-based methodology to assess the quality in our Master degrees. This quality management system was first implemented in our Decision Systems Engineering Master (DSEM). In this work, we provide a detailed description of the VRTUOSI program, putting special emphasis on its more paradigmatic issues, which might be of interest to other Higher Educational Institutions planning to implement similar programmes. We describe here the organization and implementation of VRTUOSI, a pioneer virtual exchange program between five European universities, we present our six sigma based methodology designed and developed to improve quality in it. We describe its structure and implementation through the web and its application to improve the European e-learning program and the online Master in Decision Systems Engineering. We describe its positive effects on internationalization of our online Masters

Лабораторный макет системы лечения онкологических заболеваний методом фотодинамической терапии

Для відпрацювання технічних аспектів мінімально інвазивної технології лікування онкологічних захворювань за методом фотодинамічної терапії розроблений лабораторний макет систем з використанням в якості джерела випромінювання багатоелементних матриць світловипромінюючих діодів.The system laboratory mockup has been designed to development the technical facets of the minimally invasive technique for oncologic disease treatment with photodynamic therapy method. The mockup uses the multiunit arrays of the light emitted diodes installed on the bearing hemisphere as a radiation source. LED’s irradiation generates effective operating zone with 40 mm spot diameter on the hemisphere equatorial plane.Для отработки технических аспектов минимально инвазивной технологии лечения онкологических заболеваний методом фотодинамической терапии разработан лабораторный макет системы с использованием в качестве источника излучения многоэлементных матриц светоизлучающих диодов. Излучение светодиодов, размещенных на несущей полусфере, формирует в ее экваториальной плоскости эффективное операционное поле диаметром 40 мм