Attitudes, perceptions and prospectings on mobile information literacy training: Design and validation of the MOBILE-APP questionnaire

The basic aim of this paper is to outline the process of designing and validating an instrument for measuring teachers’ perceptions regarding the importance of using mobile technologies in the teaching-learning of information competencies (MOBILE-APP). Validation was carried out by administering the instrument to a pilot group of teachers, all of whom were experts in new technologies selected from the Information and Communication, Business and Education degrees, together with a rubric to analyse the quality and relevance of the content, as well as the wording of the items. Quantitative and qualitative methodologies were combined (statistical and descriptive analyses). The results from the quantitative-qualitative analysis of the evaluation rubric and the psychometric analysis of the items show the strengths of the questionnaire and the possible improvements that could be made to optimise it, which were focused on small adjustments to some of the categories and the reordering of several items. The quantitative analysis shows a high degree of internal consistency, thus ensuring the usefulness and applicability of the instrument for evaluating teachers’ perceptions regarding the use of mobile technologies in the teaching-learning of information competencies. The validity and reliability of the instrument mean that it can be transferred to other academic settings as a platform for future diagnostic studies that allow advances to be made in teaching innovation using mobile technologies, while at the same time permitting it to be reviewed and updated. The innovative element of the MOBILE-APP questionnaire lies in the interrelation between the mode of learning (mobile learning) and the information literacy competencies.This research is part of the R&D project ‘Innovation and training in the information competencies of university teachers and stu dents in the social sciences. Model for the development of pro grammes in the mobile environment’ (CSO2016-80147-R), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness

Exploring Social Sciences Students? Perceptions on Information Literacy and the Use of Mobile Technologies in Higher Education

This study aims to examine information literacy (IL) and the use of mobile technologies in the educational sphere by a sample of social sciences undergraduate students (N = 1,390). The study used the MOBILE-APPS questionnaire, which is a scale for measuring students’ perceptions regarding information literacy (both the institutional and as a personal dimension), the threshold concepts of the ACRL Framework and the use of ICT and mobile technologies in learning contexts. The survey was distributed to a sample of four universities and eight Social Sciences degrees in Spain. A descriptive, inferential, and multivariate study is performed, regarding age, course, gender, and degree. The results show that student perception is higher concerning the personal dimension of IL; most of the students are unaware of the threshold concepts of the ACRL Framework, and responses are very heterogeneous in relation to the use of ICT and mobile technologies. An MDS-clustering strategy regarding the diverse degrees that participate in the study is also provided, to grasp a disciplinary view. From the diagnosis developed in this research, some recommendations for teaching activity in IL as well as implications for academic libraries are provided

Information provided by Spanish university websites on their assessment and quality processes

We analyze and evaluate the information provided by Spanish public universities on the web about their assessment and quality processes with the aim of detecting aspects for improvement and identifying best practices in universities that could act as a benchmark for the rest of the sector. A ested model/template incorporating a set of criteria and indicators is used to determine the quality of this information. The strengths and weaknesses of institutional websites are analyzed at both individual level and as a whole; the possible relation between website quality and the characteristics of the universities is also examined

Information Literacy Trends in Higher Education (2006-2019): Visualizing the Emerging Field of Mobile Information Literacy

The thematic evolution of research on Mobile Information Literacy (MoIL) between 2006 and 2019 in the field of Information Literacy, learning and mobile technologies is analysed in an international context. For this purpose, the relevant bibliographic references from five databases (ERIC, LISA, LISTA, Scopus and WOS) were retrieved. To systematize the keywords, high dimensionality is reduced by means of a term-based process. Fields, topics, sub-topics and top terms are defined. The main top-terms and their relationships are analysed applying the fractional counting methodology using VOSViewer software. Fifteen major themes were set, which were grouped into six clusters to identify the main thematic trends during the period under review: IL & e-learning, Mobile devices & competencies, Ethics, Library & e-resources, Educational technology and Technological environment. The convergence of IL and elearning, the growth of e-literacy, the increasing relationship between mobile devices and information competencies, as well as that of libraries and e-resources, are thus detected. In conclusion, there is evidence of a growing interdisciplinarity in the scientific publications on Mobile Information Literacy, which interrelates the studies of information and digital literacy with e-learning and mobile technologies

Information provided by Spanish university websites on their assessment and quality processes

25 p.We analyze and evaluate the information provided by Spanish public universities on the web about their assessment and quality processes with the aim of detecting aspects for improvement and identifying best practices in universities that could act as a benchmark for the rest of the sector. A tested model/template incorporating a set of criteria and indicators is used to determine the quality of this information. The strengths and weaknesses of institutional websites are analyzed at both individual level and as a whole; the possible relation between website quality and the characteristics of the universities is also examined.S

Scientific production on mobile information literacy in higher education: a bibliometric analysis (2006–2017)

This paper offers a bibliometric analysis of the scientific production on Mobile Information Literacy (m-IL) in Higher Education published between 2006 and 2017, taking into account papers covered by Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA), Library and Information Science and Technology Abstract (LISTA), and Education Resources Information Center (ERIC). Bibliometrics, as an integral part of research evaluation methodology, helps us to identify the subject’s evolution over the period studied. In this research we aim to: a) identify the most relevant journals that publish literature in this field, b) calculate the authors’ average productivity and identify the most productive authors, and c) discover the most significant trends in this academic field, through statistical and co-occurrence word analyses of the titles and the keywords used to index papers. The bibliometric results of this research provide a snapshot of the literature on Mobile Information Literacy that highlights the most relevant journals, authors, and trending keywords

Metric Analysis of the Information visibility and diffusion about the European Higher Education Area on Spanish University Websites

pp. 345-370The purpose of the study proposed in this paper is to evaluate the Spanish public university websites dedicated to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). To do so, the quality of these resources has been analysed in the light of data provided by a series of indicators grouped in seven criteria, most of which were used to determine what information is made available and in what way. The criteria used in our analysis are: visibility, authority, updatedness, accesibility, correctness and completeness, quality assessment and navigability. All in all, the results allow us to carry out an overall diagnosis of the situation and also provide us with information about the situation at each university, thus revealing their main strengths, namely authority and navegability, and also their chief shortcomings: updatedness, accessibility and quality assessment. In this way it is possible to detect the best practices in each of the aspects evaluated so that they can serve as an example and guide for universities with greater deficiencies and thus help them to improve their EHEA websites.S

Mapping Soil Burn Severity at Very High Spatial Resolution from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

ArtículoThe evaluation of the effect of burn severity on forest soils is essential to determine the impact of wildfires on a range of key ecological processes, such as nutrient cycling and vegetation recovery. The main objective of this study was to assess the potentiality of different spectral products derived from RGB and multispectral imagery collected by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) at very high spatial resolution for discriminating spatial variations in soil burn severity after a heterogeneous wildfire. In the case study, we chose a mixed-severity fire that occurred in the northwest (NW) of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain) in 2019 that affected 82.74 ha covered by three different types of forests, each dominated by Pinus pinaster, Pinus sylvestris, and Quercus pyrenaica. We evaluated soil burn severity in the field 1 month after the fire using the Composite Burn Soil Index (CBSI), as well as a pool of five individual indicators (ash depth, ash cover, fine debris cover, coarse debris cover, and unstructured soil depth) of easy interpretation. Simultaneously, we operated an unmanned aerial vehicle to obtain RGB and multispectral postfire images, allowing for deriving six spectral indices. Then, we explored the relationship between spectral indices and field soil burn severity metrics by means of univariate proportional odds regression models. These models were used to predict CBSI categories, and classifications were validated through confusion matrices. Results indicated that multispectral indices outperformed RGB indices when assessing soil burn severity, being more strongly related to CBSI than to individual indicators. The Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) was the best-performing spectral index for modelling CBSI (R2cv = 0.69), showing the best ability to predict CBSI categories (overall accuracy = 0.83). Among the individual indicators of soil burn severity, ash depth was the one that achieved the best results, specifically when it was modelled from NDWI (R2cv = 0.53). This work provides a useful background to design quick and accurate assessments of soil burn severity to be implemented immediately after the fire, which is a key factor to identify priority areas for emergency actions after forest fires.S

Legged locomotion over irregular terrains: State of the art of human and robot performance

Legged robotic technologies have moved out of the lab to operate in real environments, characterized by a wide variety of unpredictable irregularities and disturbances, all this in close proximity with humans. Demonstrating the ability of current robots to move robustly and reliably in these conditions is becoming essential to prove their safe operation. Here, we report an in-depth literature review aimed at verifying the existence of common or agreed protocols and metrics to test the performance of legged system in realistic environments. We primarily focused on three types of robotic technologies, i.e., hexapods, quadrupeds and bipeds. We also included a comprehensive overview on human locomotion studies, being it often considered the gold standard for performance, and one of the most important sources of bioinspiration for legged machines. We discovered that very few papers have rigorously studied robotic locomotion under irregular terrain conditions. On the contrary, numerous studies have addressed this problem on human gait, being nonetheless of highly heterogeneous nature in terms of experimental design. This lack of agreed methodology makes it challenging for the community to properly assess, compare and predict the performance of existing legged systems in real environments. On the one hand, this work provides a library of methods, metrics and experimental protocols, with a critical analysis on the limitations of the current approaches and future promising directions. On the other hand, it demonstrates the existence of an important lack of benchmarks in the literature, and the possibility of bridging different disciplines, e.g., the human and robotic, towards the definition of standardized procedure that will boost not only the scientific development of better bioinspired solutions, but also their market uptake

Transhumant Sheep grazing enhances ecosystem multifunctionality in productive mountain grasslands: a case study in the Cantabrian Mountains

.Understanding the effects of traditional livestock grazing abandonment on the ability of mountain grasslands to sustain multiple ecosystem functions (ecosystem multifunctionality; EMF) is crucial for implementing policies that promote grasslands conservation and the delivery of multiple ecosystem services. In this study, we evaluated the effect of short- and long-term transhumant sheep abandonment on EMF through a grazing exclusion experiment in a grassland of the Cantabrian Mountains range (NW Spain), where transhumant sheep flocks graze in summer. We considered four key ecosystem functions, derived from vegetation and soil functional indicators measured in the field: (A) biodiversity function, evaluated from total plant species evenness, diversity and richness indicators; (B) forage production function, evaluated from cover and richness of perennial and annual herbaceous species indicators; (C) carbon sequestration function, evaluated from woody species cover and soil organic carbon indicators; and (D) soil fertility function, evaluated from NH4C-N, NO3-N, P and K content in the soil. The EMF index was calculated by integrating the four standardized ecosystem functions through an averaging approach. Based on linear mixed modeling we found that grazing exclusion induced significant shifts in the considered individual ecosystem functions and also on EMF. Long-term livestock exclusion significantly hindered biodiversity and forage production functions, but enhanced the carbon sequestration function. Conversely, the soil fertility function was negatively affected by both short- and long-term grazing exclusion. Altogether, grazing exclusion significantly decreased overall EMF, especially in long-term livestock exclusion areas, while the decline in EMF in short-term exclusions with respect to grazed areas was marginally significant. The results of this study support the sustainability of traditional transhumance livestock grazing for promoting the conservation of grasslands and their ecosystem function in mountain regions.S