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The spread of fake news (FN) has attracted attention from disciplines ranging from social sciences to Artificial Intelligence. This work is novel because it explores the news-sharing behaviour of social-media users, focussing on those that spread FN, rather than the psychological motivations behind them. The 14-item Risky News-Sharing Quotient (RNSQ) was developed and Exploratory Factor Analysis discovered three relevant factors: (i) news-sharing behaviour that contributes to debunking FN; (ii) news-sharing frequency and attitudes to sharing; and (iii) news-sharing behaviour that contributes to the spread of FN. The study, conducted among university students, found that 75% reported risky news-sharing behaviour that spreads FN. No link was found between perceiving FN as a problem and debunking it. Moreover, 83% of survey participants were unable to identify a FN story. Overall, the findings suggest an inability to apply knowledge of the relevant FN detection strategies to debunk FN, but importantly an apparent lack of motivation to check the veracity of a news story. From these conclusions, better-informed educational intervention strategies can be implemented to address the FN problem in-situ, such as promoting the importance of responsible news-sharing by raising awareness of how the spread of FN can impede the proper functioning of societies.

Generative Artificial Intelligence has grown exponentially as a result of Large Language Models (LLMs). This has been possible because of the impressive performance of deep learning methods created within the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and its subfield Natural Language Generation (NLG), which is the focus of this paper. Within the growing LLM family are the popular GPT-4, Bard and more specifically, tools such as ChatGPT have become a benchmark for other LLMs when solving most of the tasks involved in NLG research. This scenario poses new questions about the next steps for NLG and how the field can adapt and evolve to deal with new challenges in the era of LLMs. To address this, the present paper conducts a review of a representative sample of surveys recently published in NLG. By doing so, we aim to provide the scientific community with a research roadmap to identify which NLG aspects are still not suitably addressed by LLMs, as well as suggest future lines of research that should be addressed going forward.

This study contributes to English for Specific Purposes (ESP) pedagogy by providing an updated examination of conceptual metaphor types (CMTs) employed in financial markets reporting. The investigation delves into the prevalence of CMTs in both social media and mainstream media contexts. Robust patterns were identified to distinguish CMT usage between mainstream and social media by leveraging big-scale data analysis, encompassing 38.6 million documents from The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Twitter and Reddit. The data collection spans fifteen months during the COVID-19 pandemic (January 2020–March 2021), marked by socioeconomic upheaval and coinciding with a surge in retail investors using low or no-cost mobile financial trading applications. Examining the proportion of CMTs reveals that war/combat, markets animate, markets inanimate, and health metaphor types have strong associations with both social and mainstream media. The gambling CMT is predominantly linked to social media. In terms of metaphor density, the results indicate a higher concentration in social media compared to mainstream media. Texts sourced from social media, characterized by greater conciseness, emerge as a potential communication barrier. The findings underscore the importance of incorporating authentic texts from social media into specialized language courses, thus enhancing language learning experiences in the domain of financial markets reporting.

The CLEAR.TEXT project (TED2021-130707B-I00) researches how natural language processing technology can support the authoring of accessible content in Spanish for people with cognitive disabilities. Our main objective is to research, implement, deploy, evaluate, and ultimately provide robust technologies for natural language processing to support the authoring of accessible Spanish content for public sector organisations (at local, regional and national level) that is intelligible to people with cognitive disability, thereby widening their inclusion and empowerment in Europe. It is expected to impact positively the quality of life of people with cognitive disabilities, facilitating their access to educational, vocational, cultural, and social opportunities in public sector organisations.

The “Conscious Natural Text Generation” project (CORTEX, grant ref. PID2021-123956OB-I00) investigates how Natural Language Generation (NLG) architectures can be improved so that they can exploit external and commonsense knowledge, and integrate it in a controllable manner (i.e., determining what knowledge to include and how to include it) when generating new text. Our main scientific objective is, therefore, to investigate and propose novel NLG architectures that integrate different types of knowledge to automatically produce reliable, truthful and quality texts, whose information complies with the principles of objectivity and plurality, thereby minimizing bias or manipulated content. The new generation of NLG systems obtained from CORTEX will significantly improve the semantic quality of the generated text, preventing, among other phenomena, the inclusion of invented facts that do not match reality (i.e., hallucination).

Las soft skills hacen referencia al conjunto de competencias de tipo transversal que resultan imprescindibles en el actual mercado laboral ya que implican a las habilidades de liderazgo, comunicación, de trabajo en equipo, etc., y que son imprescindibles para desarrollar convenientemente aquellas tareas que se les encomienden a los profesionales correspondientes. En la actualidad, estos expertos se tienen que enfrentar a la resolución de problemas, a la comprensión de su realidad cotidiana, a tener un pensamiento crítico y capacidad de comunicar, al trabajo en equipo o la capacidad de aprendizaje permanente (Succi y Canovi. 2020; Tulgan, 2015). Es decir, aunar tanto las soft skills como las hard skills El problema radica en qué las soft skills no siempre están presentes de una manera efectiva en los currículos docentes universitarios, pues en ellos, por regla general, se pone el énfasis en el dominio técnico, hard skills, dejando en muy segundo plano el desarrollo de las habilidades interpersonales. Por todo ello, el objetivo del presente proyecto fue evaluar si una intervención educativa en este sentido en la formación de los futuros docentes mediante la técnica de clase invertida y el uso de las TIC tenía una repercusión directa en la mejora de las soft skills, teniendo en cuenta la necesidad de implementar en estos profesionales las habilidades de comunicación y de liderazgo en las aulas. Para el presente estudio se escogieron 2 grupos de alumnos de segundo curso de educación primaria de la Facultad de Educación de la Universidad de Alicante, de la asignatura música en la educación primaria con un total de 50 participantes (68% mujeres y 32% hombres). Al alumnado se le solicitó que interpretara y valorara los modelos actuales de sociedad, cultura y escuela, relacionados con la enseñanza musical. Además, se les indicó que plantearan en sus intervenciones un modelo educativo integrador entre la realidad musical del aula y su entorno social, cultural y familiar, hac

La formación inicial docente muestra una estrecha relación la teoría (que se adquieren en las aulas universitarias) con la práctica profesional educativa (que se desarrolla en los centros educativos). El objetivo de esta investigación es analizar las concepciones de los futuros docentes, que cursan el Máster de Educación Secundaria, Bachillerato y Formación Profesional, sobre las relaciones entre ambos conocimientos. Se diseña un cuestionario mixto que aborda las dimensiones de la teoría y la práctica en este proceso formativo. En esta investigación han participado estudiantes matriculados en el Máster Universitario en Profesorado de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria y Bachillerato, Formación Profesional y Enseñanza de Idiomas de las diferentes especialidades que se ofertan en la Facultad de Educación de la Universidad de Alicante. Los resultados evidencian que la asignatura Prácticum ayuda a los docentes en formación a comprender aspectos importantes de las asignaturas teóricas cursadas destacando una alta satisfacción por la formación recibida en esta asignatura. Las principales conclusiones de este estudio nos hacen constatar que aún prexisten la ruptura en la formación teórico-práctica en la formación del profesorado de estas etapas educativas.

Research that tackles the pedagogical use of geolocated social media as an investigative tool for understanding cities in Geography and Urban Studies higher education programs has not been fully exploited. This study contributes by addressing the transferability of these sources as a research medium for enhancing student knowledge of urban phenomena. A collaborative problem-based learning activity was conducted in a third-year compulsory Urban Studies module of the Fundamentals in Architecture Degree at the University of Alicante. Two groups – Spanish (25 students) and English (34 students) language, participated in the activity. Foursquare and Twitter datasets were used as sources of information, and scaffolding in QGIS software, data analysis, and visualization tools were provided. Pre- and post- activity questionnaires as well as the work submitted by students gave an indication of the extent to which the activity was useful for achieving the set objective. Recurring approaches adopted by students and their “how-to” make sense of social media information enabled them to align spatiotemporal and social phenomena to the use and perception of city spaces. Students developed critical thinking and interpretative skills that are key transversal competencies for understanding the huge volume of data available in today’s digitalized world.

The objective of this study is to develop intercultural and critical citizenship competences by using a literary excerpt among a group of EFL university students in Spain. For this purpose, the focus group method was adopted, and a qualitative study was designed. The core aim was to implicitly work on aspects such as otherness, the rejection of racism and the use of revenge as a response to a perceived unethical action. The findings demonstrate that the approach dealt effectively with all these concepts. The literary excerpt triggered discussions against racism and religious intolerance. Revenge was rejected as a constructive solution to discrimination and the cohort expressed their connection to ‘others’ through a common humanity, which is linked to human rights principles. These values are closely aligned to the theoretical reference points known as Intercultural Citizenship Education (ICE), Global Citizenship Education (GCED) and cosmopolitan citizenship.

En este informe científico se identifican los principales retos científicos en los cuales está enmarcado el grupo de investigación en procesamiento del lenguaje y sistemas de información (GPLSI) de la Universidad de Alicante (UA). El objetivo de este informe es establecer un plan de investigación basado en la experiencia y participación en proyectos de investigación, y subrayar los principales retos de futuro que nos permitan definir nuevos proyectos de investigación y desarrollo en los próximos años. La Generación Automática de Lenguaje Natural (GLN) es una tarea compleja que se apoya en numerosos recursos y herramientas del Procesamiento del Lenguaje Natural (PLN). La GLN comienza a dar resultados satisfactorios, al menos para ciertos dominios y objetivos, como se puede ver de los resultados obtenidos por parte del GPLSI. No obstante, requiere un importante esfuerzo investigador. En este artículo planteamos, desde la perspectiva que da la investigación realizada hasta ahora en grupo de investigación Procesamiento Natural y Sistemas de Información (GPLSI), futuras líneas de investigación en GLN, incorporando diferentes disciplinas y metas.

This study addresses the problem of facilitating critical thinking about the real-world complexities that underlie the Sustainable Development (SD) concept among university students of architecture. The Socratic Seminar was adopted because of its characteristic exploratory questions that are closely aligned to the question-types used by the lecturer in previous years during student-requested one-to-one tutorial sessions aimed at clarifying SD concepts. The findings of this study indicate that the interactive learning session fostered a collaborative community of critical thinkers as well as a mind-shift in students’ preconceived idea of SD, suggesting that transformative learning had occurred. Furthermore, the Socratic Seminar facilitated observation of whether students in a group setting could critically apply previously acquired theoretical knowledge to assessing SD in the context provided by the multimedia material viewed. The Socratic Seminar was shown to be a useful educational tool for specifically eliciting the complexities of SD among architecture and urban planning students, thereby building on the pedagogy applied in one-to-one student-driven initiatives.

The 2003 Iraq War was a landmark for real-time news dissemination, with news broadcast by journalists embedded with U.S. troops. The literature indicates that mainstream media reflected the viewpoints of those in power, giving little coverage to anti-war sentiment. This study focuses on press coverage relating to a specific aspect of dissent—protest songs against the 2003 Iraq War. After analyzing the content of articles sourced from mainstream newspapers from both sides of the Atlantic, namely, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and the Telegraph, the results indicate that from the beginning of this war, anti-war songs were perceived by journalists to be in decline for reasons that were reported to have been linked to the period’s sociopolitical and economic context. The conclusions of the study underscore the value of analyzing news type articles and opinion pieces from newspapers of record.

Desde la implantación del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior las metodologías docentes han tenido como centro del proceso de enseñanza aprendizaje al alumnado. El proyecto presentado busca indagar en las características motivacionales y de estrategias de aprendizaje que presentan los estudiantes, para de esta forma poder ofrecer una respuesta más cercana y adecuada a sus necesidades, facilitando un proceso de orientación educativa que conduzca a un mejor rendimiento académico. Para ello se ha utilizado una adaptación de la versión reducida del Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Pintrich, Smith, García, & McKeachie, 1993) expuesta en el trabajo de Sabogal et al (2011). Los procedimientos para el tratamiento de los datos con el programa Spss han sido descriptivos, ANOVA y correlacionales. Los resultados obtenidos muestran cómo las estrategias de aprendizaje y las metas de orientación intrínseca, dentro de la dimensión motivacional, son bien valoradas por los estudiantes. Asimismo, también se refleja la relación directa de estas variables con la valoración personal del rendimiento académico de los estudiantes, a la vez que la influencia negativa de la ansiedad, derivada de la no valoración de la tarea.

The question of developing educational policies that involve training people to be capable of critical reflection and skilled in approaching the discussion-debate binomial, with the overall goal of achieving learning which is of a transformative kind, is currently embraced by the transdisciplinary paradigm known as Global Citizenship Education. This qualitative study investigates the impact of protest or topical songs released in response to the Iraq War on a cohort of university students and explores whether these songs could be useful in Global Citizenship Education. The results of the study emphasize the value of these types of songs as triggers for transformative learning, because, independently of respective national educational policies or the possible influence of the mass and digital media, these songs were shown to tap into an underlying set of universal values, rights and attitudes among citizens that drive the need for Global Citizenship Education design and evaluation.

Desde los años 1990 (Curtis, Ward, Sharp, & Hankin, 2013), con el desarrollo de un mundo cada vez más globalizado e individualista, diferentes estudios (Andreotti, 2014; Brown, 2017; Byram, 2014b; Guilherme, 2002, 2007; Hoskins, 2006; Hoskins & Crick, 2010; Osler & Starkey, 2015; Shultz, 2007; VanderDussen Toukan, 2017) han mostrado la necesidad de desarrollar políticas educativas que impliquen una forma de aprendizaje donde los estudiantes sean capaces de desarrollar proyectos y competencias cívicas que aborden temas referidos a cuestiones sociales, económicas o ambientales, entre otras. Este enfoque global y colaborativo de la educación es conocido como Global Citizenship Education (GCED), y en él se abordan contenidos como la paz y los derechos humanos, la interculturalidad, la educación ciudadana, el respeto por la diversidad y la tolerancia, y la inclusividad. Partiendo de estos principios, la pregunta de investigación planteada es ver si la canción protesta tiene elementos que pueden servir como materia transversal en el ámbito educativo especialmente en la formación de la GCED en alumnos universitarios. El antecedente del uso de la canción protesta, por ejemplo, para despertar sentimientos hacia movimientos sociales que estaban o están en contra de la guerra y en consecuencia buscar la mejora de los derechos civiles, no es algo novedoso. Los episodios que protagonizó la sociedad estadounidense contra la guerra de Vietnam se pueden considerar como un hito histórico en la reivindicación de estos –The Civil Rights Movement-, pero en la actualidad, dada la globalidad y la individualización del mundo, como ya se ha señalado, parece ser que la canción tipo protesta, a pesar de su producción y conocimiento por parte de la sociedad, no tiene el mismo vigor ni magnitud que en épocas anteriores. Esta aparente carencia de vigencia cuando el mensaje que subyace es el mismo a largo del tiempo, pone de manifiesto una serie de inputs que deben de ser analizados con el fin d

Una experiencia educativa innovadora implica la innovación docente en torno a los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje inclusivos. La asignatura Lengua Inglesa IV del segundo año del grado de estudios ingleses en la Universidad de Alicante, incluye entre otras cuestiones, desarrollar destrezas orales. Utilizando un texto determinado y empleando una didáctica aplicada “think-pair-share” para fomentar el debate-discusión. Los resultados muestran que la actividad es útil para que los alumnos ganen confianza a la hora de practicar las destrezas orales en inglés y, además, manifiestan que han disfrutado las actividades. Se concluye que este tipo de didáctica aplicada crea un ambiente positivo donde el profesor proporciona un feedback continuo, que se traduce en una comunidad de aprendizaje de confianza donde se fomenta la autoevaluación, la reflexión crítica y las competencias cívicas, cuestiones coincidentes con las exigencias del proceso de Bolonia, Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior (EEES), de mejorar la relevancia del aprendizaje y la enseñanza y el desarrollo de ciudadanos comprometidos, satisfechos y articulados.

“Strange Fruit”, a song popularized by Billie Holiday in 1939, paints a gruesome picture of racial violence suffered by former African-American slaves following Reconstruction, 1863-1877 (Foner, 2011). While many scholars have analyzed the lyrics of “Strange Fruit”, research that focuses on young people’s reaction to the song is scarce. This study explores the impact of Holiday’s performance of the song on students at a New England Research University. Institutional survey software was used to create an online questionnaire that participants (n= 40) answered in a controlled environment. The findings indicate feelings of disgust, anger, shame and sadness after participants listened to “Strange Fruit”. Although few students could indicate the song’s time-period, many recognized the atrocities committed against African-Americans since slavery and the discrimination that continues. “Strange Fruit”, irrespective of whether the participants knew the background of the song, provokes a powerful reaction against racial violence, one which demonstrates the song’s value as a cross-curricular pedagogical tool for developing transversal competences linked to socially desirable values and principles.