The student evaluation of teaching and the competence of students as evaluators

When the college student satisfaction survey is considered in the promotion and recognition of instructors, a usual complaint is related to the impact that biased ratings have on the arithmetic mean (used as a measure of teaching effectiveness). This is especially significant when the number of students responding to the survey is small. In this work a new methodology, considering student to student perceptions, is presented. Two different estimators of student rating credibility, based on centrality properties of the student social network, are proposed. This method is established on the idea that in the case of on-site higher education, students often know which others are competent in rating the teaching and learning process.Comment: 20 pages, 2 table

Principal alarms in multivariate statistical process control

This paper describes a methodology for the simulation of multivariate out of control situations using in-control data. The method is based on finding the independent factors of the variability of the process, and shifting these factors one by one. These shifts are then translated in terms of the observed variables. The shifts provoked by the most important factors are called principal alarms. The principal alarms are plotted, visualizing the main deviations of the process. Also, a resampling procedure for ARL estimation using principal alarms is proposed. An application using a real industrial process, illustrates the usefulness of the methodology

Exploring Male and Female Voices through Epistemic Modality and Evidentiality in Some Modern English Travel Texts on the Canaries

This article describes authorial voice through evidential and epistemic sentential devices in a corpus of 19th and early 20th century travel texts. The corpus contains four works written by female travellers and the other four by men. Therefore, apart from providing a catalogue of the strategies deployed by the authors in order to mark modality and evidentiality, we also report on expected differences in their frequencies of use in relation to the writer’s gender. In addition, the interest of this study lies in the fact that, to the best of our knowledge, no research on writer stance has previously been carried out in texts belonging to the genre of travel writing

Predicting willingness to pay for geographical origin in Albania: A logistic approach

This study empirically evaluates the factors that determine willingness to pay a premium for a product’s geographical origin and the effect of socio-demographics in indicating one or another factor. The premium to origin is linked with the traditional aspect, low health risk and high nutritional values. Logistic regression shows that elder, highly educated people buying in dairy shops are less likely to pay a higher premium. Consumers who are more likely to pay more include: those on high incomes who place importance on origin and taste attributes during the buying decision process and, in so doing, link the extra cost with the fact that it comes from a traditional cheese-producing region.Cette étude évalue de manière empirique les facteurs qui déterminent le consentement à payer une prime pour l’origine géographique d’un produit et les effets socio- démographie du consommateur en indiquant un ou l’autre facteur. Le prime à l’origine est liée à l’aspect traditionnel, au faible risque à la santé et de haute valeur nutritionnelle. La régression logistique montre que les personnes le plus âgées, bien éduqués qui achètent dans les magasins des produits laitiers sont moins susceptibles de payer une prime plus élevée. Tandis que les consommateurs qui sont plus susceptibles de payer plus comprennent: les personnes à revenus élevés qui placent importance sur l’origine et le goût pendant le processus de décision d’achat et le prime payée est lié avec les aspects traditionnels du produit

Centros de Documentacion Audiovisual Publicos y Privados en la Ciudad de Cordoba

Es un informe sobre centros de documentación audiovisual públicos y privados existentes en la ciudad de Córdoba. Trabajan sobre distintas temáticas desde derechos humanos, hechos relevantes ocurridos en el siglo XX y XXI, artes, etc. Y con diversos tipos de soporte audiovisual, desde diapositivas, fotografías analógicas y digitales y CD´S y DVD´S. Mi intención fue mostrar el decidido avance de la documentación audiovisual en la divulgación de la información en la ciudad de Córdoba.Is a report on public audiovisual documentation centers and private sectors in the city of Cordoba. Working on various issues from human rights, material events in the XX and XXI century, arts, etc. And with various types of audiovisual media, from slides, digital and analogue photographs and CD's and DVD's. My intention was to show the growing impetus of audiovisual documentation in the dissemination of information in the city of Cordoba

Tourism and productivity: Case study of the hotel and catering industry in the Andalusian region

The object of this paper is to analyse the situation and evolution of the productivity of the tourism industry in the Andalusian region, and more specifically of the hotel and catering branch, relating it to the organisational structure of its businesses. First of all, the issue of the definition and limitation of the concept of productivity applied to the services sector is addressed, as traditionally this concept is focused on manufacturing, and the different ways of measuring and the analysis methods are reviewed. Then, using the accounting information provided by the Balances Centre of Andalusia (CBA), the general features of the organisational structure of the hotel and catering industry in de Andalusian region, stratifying the samples by the size of the companies and examining the medium size of the Andalusian hotel and catering businesses. Once the organisational structure of the sector is analysed, it is related to the state and evolution of its productivity, using a simple ratio between the brute added value and the personnel expenses, and completing this analysis with a relative efficiency index, the Baldwin efficiency index, with which the technical efficiency of each company is compared to the mass of most efficient companies. As a result of this research it is observed that the productivity indexes increase as web as the size of the companies and during the considered period, especially in the case of the medium sized and large companies. Nevertheless, these productivity increases are less relevant than the increase of employment, especially in case of smaller companies.

Public spending, prívate investment, and growth in O.E.C.D. countries: an empirical investigation

This paper is concerned with the empirical relationship between government spending and prívate investment. A panel of 14 OECD countries is used. We present evidence which suggests the existence of a significant crowding-in effect of prívate investment by public investment, through the positive impact of infrastructure on prívate investment productivity. Moreover, government consumption appears to crowd out prívate investment. The implications of these resulte are of foremost importance when it comes to fiscal consolidation. Déficit reductions engineered through cuts in public investment could severely impinge upon prívate capital accumulation and growth prospects.Este trabajo analiza la relación empírica existente entre el gasto público y la inversión privada en un panel de 14 países pertenecientes a la OCDE. La evidencia presentada sugiere la existencia de un significativo efecto "crowding-in" de la inversión pública, que opera a través de la complementariedad entre las infraestructuras y la inversión privada. Por otra parte, el consumo público parece ejercer un "efecto expulsión" de la inversión privada. L a implicaciones de estos resultados son de gran trascendencia en materia de consolidación fiscal. Reducciones del déficit conseguidas mediante recortes en la inversión pública podrían dañar severamente la acumulación de capital y las perspectivas de crecimiento

La importancia de enseñar estrategias didácticas en la segunda lengua. Propuestas metodológicas para los docentes de segundas lenguas en la enseñanza de estrategias lingüísticas

Castellà: El objetivo principal de mi proyecto final de master es ilustrar los beneficios de enseñar estrategias lingüísticas para la adquisición de segundas lenguas. Creo que uno de los retos de los profesores de idiomas en particular, y de todos los docentes en general, consiste en desarrollar metodologías de aprendizaje que vayan más allá de la mera transmisión de contenidos de manera dogmática y descontextualizada. De esta manera ayudaremos a formar personas más críticas e independientes. En mi investigación me gustaría probar que los estudiantes con mejores resultados (high attainers) en su segunda lengua poseen una mayor habilidad para crear un mayor número de relaciones intercognitivas que los estudiantes con peores resultados (low attainers) en L2. Esto se debe a que a menudo los estudiantes con peores resultados no tienen las herramientas que tienen los que obtienen mejores resultados para solucionar los retos cognitivos que se les plantean. No obstante, creo que las estrategias lingüísticas no son sólo susceptibles de ser enseñadas sino que la formación estratégica de los estudiantes puede mejorar su proceso de aprendizaje y en consecuencia sus resultados. De ahí que considere que si revelamos el proceso mental que siguen los alumnos con menos dificultades en L2 a los alumnos que tienen más dificultades dejaremos el “mito” del conocimiento al descubierto y lograremos traspasarles conductas de aprendizaje de orden superior. Como si del “Mito de la Caverna” de Platón se tratara, creo que los profesores podemos dotar a nuestros alumnos con las herramientas necesarias para salir de la oscuridad y enfrentarse a los problemas cognitivos que les surjan en su segunda lengua. Igual que autores como Rubin, Grenfell o Harris creo que la tarea de los profesores consiste en ayudar a los estudiantes a ampliar su abanico de estrategias didácticas para que puedan llegar a ser competentes en su segunda lengua. Para que esto sea posible abogo porque no centremos la atención únicamente en qué aprenden nuestros alumnos, sino en cómo aprenden y cómo los profesores podemos intervenir para que los alumnos puedan llegar a ser independientes y autónomos en su segunda lengua (independent learners)