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This paper presents a new approach to retrieve and further integrate tabular datasets (collections of rows and columns) using union and join operations. In this work, both processes were carried out using a similarity measure based on contextual word embeddings, which allows finding semantically similar tables and overcome the recall problem of lexical approaches based on string similarity. This work is the first attempt to use contextual word embeddings in the whole pipeline of table search and integration, including for the first time their use in the join operation. A comprehensive analysis of their performance was carried out on both retrieving and integrating tabular datasets, comparing them with context-free models. Column headings and cell values were used as contextual information and their impact on each task was evaluated. The results revealed that contextual models significantly outperform context-free models and a traditional weighting schema in ad hoc table retrieval. In the data integration task, contextual models also improved the results on union operation compared to context-free approaches. Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. This research has been partially funded by project “Desarrollo de un ecosistema de datos abiertos para transformar el sector turístico” (GVA-COVID19/2021/103) funded by Conselleria de Innovación, Universidades, Ciencia y Sociedad Digital de la Generalitat Valenciana (Spain); and by projects “CHAN-TWIN” (TED2021-130890B-C21), “COnscious natuRal TEXt generation (CORTEX)” (PID2021-123956OB-I00) and “Technological Resources for Intelligent VIral AnaLysis through NLP (TRIVIAL)” (PID2021-122263OB-C22), funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and the spread of the COVID-19 disease led to a lockdown being imposed in Spain to minimise contagion from 16 March 2020 to 1 May 2020. Over this period, measures were taken to reduce population mobility (a key factor in disease transmission). The scenario thus created enabled us to examine the impact of factors other than mobility (in this case, meteorological conditions) on the incidence of the disease, and thus to identify which environmental variables played the biggest role in the pandemic's evolution. Worthy of note, the data required to perform the study was entirely extracted from governmental open data sources. The present work therefore demonstrates the utility of such data to conduct scientific research of interest to society, leading to studies that are also fully reproducible. The results revealed a relationship between temperatures and the spread of COVID-19. The trend was that of a slightly lower disease incidence as the minimum temperature rises, i.e. the lower the minimum temperature, the greater the number of cases. Furthermore, a link was found between the incidence of the disease and other variables, such as altitude and proximity to the sea. There were no indications, however, in the study's data, of a relationship between incidence and precipitation or wind. This work is funded by GVA-COVID19/2021/103 project from “Conselleria de Innovación, Universidades, Ciencia y Sociedad Digital de la Generalitat Valenciana”.

Crowd monitoring was an essential measure to deal with over-tourism problems in urban destinations in the pre-COVID era. It will play a crucial role in the pandemic scenario when restarting tourism and making destinations safer. Notably, a Destination Management Organisation (DMO) of a smart destination needs to deploy a technological layer for crowd monitoring that allows data gathering in order to count visitors and distinguish them from residents. The correct identification of visitors versus residents by a DMO, while privacy rights (e.g., Regulation EU 2016/679, also known as GDPR) are ensured, is an ongoing problem that has not been fully solved. In this paper, we describe a novel approach to gathering crowd data by processing (i) massive scanning of WiFi access points of the smart destination to find SSIDs (Service Set Identifier), as well as (ii) the exposed Preferred Network List (PNL) containing the SSIDs of WiFi access points to which WiFi-enabled mobile devices are likely to connect. These data enable us to provide the number of visitors and residents of a crowd at a given point of interest of a tourism destination. A pilot study has been conducted in the city of Alcoi (Spain), comparing data from our approach with data provided by manually filled surveys from the Alcoi Tourist Info office, with an average accuracy of 83%, thus showing the feasibility of our policy to enrich the information system of a smart destination. This research was carried out within the research Project Alcoi Tourist Lab framework, co-funded by the Alcoi City Council & the Valencian Innovation Agency. The research was also partially funded by project UAPOSTCOVID19-10 from the University of Alicante. Finally, this research was partly supported by the EU CEF project GreenMov, CARM HORECOV-21 project (https://horecovid.com/ (accessed on 12 January 2022)). is financed through the Call for Public Aid destined to finance the Strategic projects contemplated in the Research and Innovation Strategy for Smart Specialization - RIS3MUR Strategy by the Autonomous Community of the Region of Murcia, through the Ministry of Economic Development, Tourism and Employment within the framework of the FEDER Region of Murcia Operational Program 2014–2020 within the framework Thematic Objective 1. Strengthen research, technological development and innovation by 80% and with CARM’s own funds in 20%, and finally the EU project H2020 NIoVE (833742).

Discovering the main features of virality patterns in Twitter is the focus of this research. Five trending topics related to the COVID-19 pandemic were selected for the study, with Spanish as the target language. To carry out the discovery of virality patterns, we applied opinion mining techniques that enable us to structure the information based on the polarity of the messages and the emotions they contain. After transforming the information from an unstructured textual representation to a structured one, data mining techniques were applied, specifically association rules mining. Message patterns with the highest virality (high shares and high likes), and at the same time the most relevant characteristics of the patterns with less impact were extracted. After an exhaustive analysis of the most relevant non-redundant rules, it can be concluded that messages with a high-negative polarity and a very high emotional charge, especially emotions that have intensified with the COVID-19 pandemic, such as fear, sadness, anger and surprise are more likely to go viral in social media. By contrast, messages with little news coverage in the media, few authors, and the absence of surprise are relevant features when it comes to seeing messages with very low dissemination in social media. This research work has been partially funded by Generalitat Valenciana through project “SIIA: Tecnologias del lenguaje humano para una sociedad inclusiva, igualitaria, y accesible” with grant reference PROMETEU/2018/089. This research work has been also funded by FEDER (EU) / Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion - Agencia Estatal de Investigacion (Spanish Government)” through project RTI2018-094653-B-C22: “Modelang: Modeling the behavior of digital entities by Human Language Technologies”, and the LIVING-LANG project (RTI2018-094653-B-C21). Additionally, it has been backed by the work of both COST Actions: CA19134 – “Distributed Knowledge Graphs” and CA19142 – “Leading Platform for European Citizens, Industries, Academia and Policymakers in Media Accessibility”.

More and more governments around the world are publishing tabular open data, mainly in formats such as CSV or XLS(X). These datasets are mostly individually published, i.e. each publisher exposes its data on the Web without considering potential relationships with other datasets (from its own or from other publishers). As a result, reusing several open datasets together is not a trivial task, thus requiring mechanisms that allow data consumers (as software developers or data scientists) to integrate and access tabular open data published on the Web. In this paper, we propose a model-driven approach to automatically generate Web APIs that homogeneously access multiple integrated tabular open datasets. This work focuses on data that can be integrated by means of join and union operations. As a first step, our approach detects unionable and joinable tabular open data by using a table similarity measure based on word embeddings. Then, an APIfication process is developed to create APIs that access the previously integrated datasets through a single endpoint. A running example is presented throughout the article, as well as a set of experiments for performance evaluation to show the feasibility of our approach. This work was supported by the National Foundation for Research, Technology and Development of the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness under Project TIN2016-78103-C2-2-R and Project RTI2018-094653-B-C22. The work of César González-Mora was supported by a contract for predoctoral training with the Generalitat Valenciana and the European Social Fund under Grant ACIF/2019/044.

Nowadays, end-users are able to adapt Web applications when some of their requirements have not been taken into account by developers. One possible way to do adaptations is by using Web Augmentation techniques. Web Augmentation allows end-users to modify the Web sites’ user interfaces once these are loaded on the client-side, i.e., in the browser. They achieve these adaptations by developing and/or installing Web browser plugins (“augmenters”) that modify the user interface with new functionalities. This particular kind of software artifacts requires special attention regarding maintenance as–in most cases–they depend on third-party resources, such as HTML pages. When these resources are upgraded, unexpected results during the augmentation process may occur. Many communities have arisen around Web Augmentation, and today there are large repositories where developers share their augmenters; end-users may give feedback about existing augmentations and even ask for new ones. Maintenance is a key phase in the augmenters’ life-cycle, and currently, this task falls (as usual) on the developers. In this paper, we present a participatory approach for allowing end-users without programming skills to participate in the augmenters’ maintenance phase. In order to allow this, we also provide support for the development phase to bootstrap a first version of the augmenter and to reduce the load on developers in both phases, development and maintenance. We present an analysis of more than eight thousand augmenters, which helped us devise the approach. Finally, we present an experiment with 48 participants to validate our approach. PICT 2015–2050 , TIN2016-78103-C2-2-R and ACIF/2019/044.

Widely adoption of Information Technologies has resulted in the continuous growing of open data available on the Web. However, the lack of suitable mechanisms to understand open data sources hampers its reusability. One way to overcome this limitation is by means of Web Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) with proper documentation, nowadays being the existing very rudimentary, hard to follow, and sometimes incomplete or even inaccurate in most cases. In order to improve the documentation of Web APIs that access open data, this paper proposes a novel approach to automatically generate interactive Web API documentation, both machine and user readable. This process starts by analysing the documentation of an API to obtain important information, automatically constructing Natural Language descriptions of the main Web API concepts by applying Natural Language Processing (NLP), and specifically, language generation techniques. Then, the documentation is made interactive by making it available as a Web interface, offering easy access to open data provided by Web APIs. Therefore, the use and comprehension of the Web APIs is facilitated, thus promoting the reusability of open data. The feasibility of our approach is presented through a case study and an experiment with users, both showing the benefits of our approach. This work has been partially funded by the following projects: GVA-COVID19/2021/103, TIN2016-78103-C2-2-R, PROMETEU/2018/089, RTI2018-094653-B-C22, RTI2018-094649-B-I00, TIN2017-90773-REDT and COST Action CA18231.

Context: A relevant question in requirements engineering is which set of functional requirements (FR) to prioritize and implement, while keeping non-functional requirements (NFR) balanced and optimized. Objective: We aim to provide empirical evidence that requirement engineers may perform better at the task of selecting FRs while optimizing and balancing NFRs using an alternative (automated) i* post-processed model, compared to the original i* model. Method: We performed a controlled experiment, designed to compare the original i* graphical notation, with our post-processed i* visualizations based on Pareto efficiency (a tabular and a radar chart visualization). Our experiment consisted of solving different exercises of various complexity for selecting FRs while balancing NFR. We considered the efficiency (time spent to correctly answer exercises), and the effectiveness (regarding time: time spent to solve exercises, independent of correctness; and regarding correctness of the answer, independent of time). Results: The efficiency analysis shows it is 3.51 times more likely to solve exercises correctly with our tabular and radar chart visualizations than with i*. Actually, i* was the most time-consuming (effectiveness regarding time), had a lower number of correct answers (effectiveness regarding correctness), and was affected by complexity. Visual or textual preference of the subjects had no effect on the score. Beginners took more time to solve exercises than experts if i* is used (no distinction if our Pareto-based visualizations are used). Conclusion: For complex model instances, the Pareto front based tabular visualization results in more correct answers, compared to radar chart visualization. When we consider effectiveness regarding time, the i* graphical notation is the most time consuming visualization, independent of the complexity of the exercise. Finally, regarding efficiency, subjects consume less time when using radar chart visualization than tabular visualization, and even more so compared to the original i* graphical notation. Sven Casteleyn is funded under the Ramón y Cajal Program of the Spanish Government, grant number RYC-2014-16606. This work has been partially supported by the Publi@City project (TIN2016-78103-C2-2-R) from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

The objective of this paper is to classify and analyse all research on open data performed in the scientific community from a technological viewpoint, providing a detailed exploration based on six key facets: publication venue, impact, subject, domain, life-cycle phases and type of research. This paper therefore provides a consolidated overview of the open data arena that allows readers to identify well-established topics, trends, and open research issues. Additionally, we provide an extensive qualitative discussion of the most interesting findings to pave the way for future research. Our first identification phase resulted in 893 relevant peer-reviewed articles, published between 2006 and 2019 in a wide variety of venues. Analysis of the results shows that open data research grew slowly from 2006 but increased significantly as from 2009. In 2019, research interest in open data from a technological perspective overall decreased. This fact could indicate that research is beginning to stabilise, i.e., the open data research hype is over, and the research field is reaching maturity. Main findings are (i) increasing effort in researching on Semantic Web technologies as a mechanism to publish and reuse linked open data, (ii) software systems are proposed to solve open data technical problems; and (iii) considering technological aspects of legislation and standardization is needed to widely introduce open data in society. Finally, we provide complementary insights regarding open data innovation projects, with special emphasis on publication (e.g., open data portals) and consumption (e.g., open data as business enabler) of open data. This work was supported by the Spanish Government (MINECO) under Project TIN2016-78103-C2-2-R and Project TIN2017-89069-R, and in part by the European Union Horizon 2020 Program through the ODINE Project under Grant 644683 and the Data Pitch Project under Grant 732506. The work of Jose-Norberto Mazón was supported by the “José Castillejo” research program from the Spanish Government (Programa Estatal de Promoción del Talento y su Empleabilidad en ICDCi, Subprograma de Movilidad, del Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2013-2016) under Grant JC2015-00284.

Public Sector Information is considered to play a fundamental role in the growth of the knowledge economy and improvements in society. Given the difficulty in publishing and maintaining all available data, due to budget constraints, institutions need to select which data to publish, giving priority to data most likely to generate social and economic impact. Priority of publication could become an even more significant problem in Smart Cities: as huge amounts of information are generated from different domains, the way data is prioritized and thus reused, could be a determining factor in promoting, among others, new and sustainable business opportunities for local entrepreneurs, and to improve citizen quality of life. However, people in charge of prioritizing which data to publish through open data portals (such as Chief Data Officers, or CDOs) do not have available any specific support in their decision-making process. In this work, a proposal of a framework for prioritization of open data publication as well as its application to Smart Cities is presented. This specific application of the framework relies on OSS (Open Source Software) indicators to help making decisions on the most relevant data to publish focused on developers and businesses operating within the Smart City context. This work was funded by (i) Ministerio de Economía e Innovación (Spain) TIN2015-69957-R (MINECO/ERDF, EU) project and TIN2016-78103-C2-2-R (MINECO/ERDF, EU) project, (ii) POCTEP 4IE project (0045-4IE-4-P), and (iii) Consejería de Economía e Infraestructuras/Junta de Extremadura (Spain) - European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)- GR18112 project and IB16055 project.

The ever-growing amount of information in today’s world has led to the publication of more and more open data, i.e., that which is available in a free and reusable manner, on the Web. Open data is considered highly valuable in situational scenarios, in which thematic data is required for a short life cycle by a small group of consumers with specific needs. In this context, data consumers (developers or data scientists) need mechanisms with which to easily assess whether the data is adequate for their purpose. SPARQL endpoints have become very useful for the consumption of open data, but we argue that its steep learning curve hampers open data reuse in situational scenarios. In order to overcome this pitfall, in this paper, we coin the term disposable Web APIs as an alternative mechanism for the consumption of open data in situational scenarios. Disposable Web APIs are created on-the-fly to be used temporarily by a user to consume open data. In this paper we specifically describe an approach with which to leverage semantic information from data sources so as to automatically generate easy-to-use disposable Web APIs that can be used to access open data in a situational scenario, thus avoiding the complexity and learning curve of SPARQL and the effort of manually processing the data. We have conducted several experiments to discover whether non-experienced users find it easier to use our disposable Web API or a SPARQL endpoint to access open data. The results of the experiments led us to conclude that, in a situational scenario, it is easier and faster to use the Web API than the corresponding SPARQL endpoint in order to consume open data. This work was supported in part by the Access@City coordinated Research Project through the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities under Grant TIN2016-78103-C2-1-R and Grant TIN2016-78103-C2-2-R; in part by the Plataforma intensiva en datos proveedora de servicios inteligentes de movilidad (MoviDA) Project through Rey Juan Carlos University; and in part by the Recolección y publicación de datos abiertos para la reactivación del sector turístico postCOVID-19 (UAPOSTCOVID19-10) Project through the Consejo Social of the University of Alicante. The work of César González-Mora was supported in part by the Generalitat Valenciana, and in part by the European Social Fund under Grant ACIF/2019/044.

In order to facilitate the reusing of open data from open data platforms’ catalogs, Web Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are an important mechanism for reusers. However, there is a lack of suitable Web APIs to access data from open data platforms. Moreover, in most cases, the currently available APIs only allow to access catalog’s metadata or to download entire data resources (i.e. coarse-grain access to data), hampering the reuse of data. Therefore, we propose a model-based approach to automatically generate Web APIs from open data. Our generated Web APIs facilitate the access and reuse of specific data (i.e., providing fine-grain or query-level access to data), which will result in many societal and economic benefits such as transparency and innovation. With this approach we address open data publishers which will be able to include a Web API within their data, but also open data reusers in case of missing APIs. This APIfication process, which means the creation of APIs for every available dataset, is based on automatic, generic and standardised generation mechanisms. The performance and functioning of this approach is validated with different datasets, which successfully generates Web APIs that facilitate the reuse of data. This work has been funded by the National Foundation for Research, Technology and Development and the project TIN2016-78103-C2-2-R of the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness. César González-Mora has a contract for predoctoral training with the Generalitat Valenciana and the European Social Fund by the grant ACIF/2019/044.

Reverse-osmosis seawater desalination processes produce a hypersaline effluent waste (brine) which is usually discharged back into the sea via an underwater outfall. Brine discharges can cause environmental problems due to their high salt concentration, but the effects can be minimised by installing a diffuser structure at the end of the pipeline. In May 2010, a mono-port diffuser was installed at the Nuevo Canal de Cartagena desalination plant pipeline (located in Murcia, Spain) in order to increase effluent dispersion. The aim of this paper was to characterise the brine-plume dispersion throughout a series of oceanographic surveys that were carried out before and after the diffuser installation (2006–2011), and to quantify the effects of the diffuser on the behaviour and dilution rate of the effluent. The results of six years of operational monitoring were also compared with simulations predicted by a numerical mixing model simulation (CORMIX 1), obtaining high concordance with field data. After the diffuser installation, both field data results and model simulations showed a strong increase in the dilution rate of the brine plume, and a significant reduction in the size of the affected area. This work was funded by “Mancomunidad Canales del Taibilla” (MANCOMUNIDADCANALES2-9D, MANCOMUNIDADCANALES4-08D).

Larvae of Allograpta exotica (Wiedemann, 1830) (Diptera: Syrphidae) are important natural enemies of common agricultural pests such as aphids (Hemiptera: Aphididae). Life history, life table and functional response of A. exotica were determined using the cowpea aphid Aphis craccivora Koch, 1854 as prey under controlled conditions of temperature, humidity and light. The average recorded duration of A. exotica development was 2.0, 7.4 and 5.7 days for eggs, larvae and pupae respectively, and 15.04 days from egg to adult emergence. The adult longevity was not significantly sex dependent, but imagoes lived longer than in previous studies. The offspring sex ratio was favorable to males. The mortality and survival rate were recorded on a daily basis for all immature stages and adults. The age specific survival rate was determined and the highest mortality occurred in eggs followed by mortality in 1st and 2nd instar larva. Moreover, in the present study different levels of aphid densities 10, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 and 100 were used to calculate the functional response. Based on logistic regression analyses the three instar larvae and the whole larval stage (first to third instar) exhibited a type II functional response. Handling time was shortest for the third larval instar followed by second and first instars. Potential use of A. exotica in augmentative biological control is discussed. Consejo de Desarrollo Científico, Humanístico y Tecnológico (CDCHT-UCLA, Venezuela) for funding support for the PhD thesis project 003-DAG-2007 granted to E. Arcaya.

[EN] The impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on tourism and their foreseeable future evolution seem to be shaping a new scenario for destination management. This new context has given rise to the need for new management models. One of these models is the emerging smart tourism destination (STD), although it requires greater conceptual precision in order to become a new paradigm for destination management. This paper proposes a systemic model for STDs which facilitates the interpretation of the role of ICTs in the management of tourism destinations. Accordingly, the Delphi technique has been applied so as to determine the opinion of experts regarding the feasibility of the STD approach, its advantages and limitations and also the size of the impact of ICTs on the management and marketing of tourism destinations. This prospective exercise highlights the intensification of the impact of ICTs over the coming years which will shape a new scenario for management characterised by technology and data management. However, the efficiency of the STD approach will not depend exclusively only on technology but also on an appropriate governance of the destination that systematically incorporates the three levels of the STD, namely the strategic¿relational, instrumental and applied levels., This research has been carried out within the framework of the project "New approaches for tourism destinations planning and management: conceptualization, case studies and problems. Definition of smart tourist destinations models" (CSO2014-59193-R) under the Spanish National R&D&I Plan financed by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

Vermetid reefs are distinctive bioconstructions of the Mediterranean and other warm temperate and subtropical seas. In the Iberian Peninsula the vermetid endemism Dendropoma lebeche Templado et al., 2016 and the coralline alga Neogoniolithon brassica-florida (Harvey) Setchell & Mason are the main biogenic engineers of this natural heritage. However, very few empirical studies deal with their early patterns of succession. We installed two sets of colonization plates in spring (May) and autumn (November) along a healthy vermetid reef on the island Nueva Tabarca (Alicante, SE Iberian Peninsula), to study the early succession patterns of assemblages. Taxonomic composition and the Shannon diversity index were considered over a 1–2 year period. The seasonal month of installation had a detectable effect on taxonomic composition during the first nine months of immersion, also conditioning the diversity pattern. The succession proceeded faster for the May installation set, where both engineering species showed higher cover values from the beginning. Even though there was hardly any three-dimensional accretion on the plates during this study, those that remained well over a year reached Dendropoma densities close to those reported for healthy Mediterranean vermetid reefs. The use of colonization plates as recruitment enhancers could be a potential tool for restoration procedures, because of the minor impact of their installation and the relatively short time required to achieve high vermetid densities. This research received financial assistance from the project “Seguimiento de macroalgas sobre el litoral rocoso y Posidonia de la Comunidad Valenciana, dentro de la Directiva Marco del Agua” of the Generalitat Valenciana.

Los datos abiertos son considerados un mecanismo de democratización en el acceso a la información generada por organizaciones del sector público y para el desarrollo de servicios digitales generados por el sector infomediario. Sin embargo, esta tendencia ha presentado algunas barreras que van desde la calidad insuficiente de los datos publicados hasta la falta de mantenimiento de los portales donde se publican. Esta investigación realiza un análisis del estado de la cuestión en el ámbito de los datos abiertos, así como de los estándares internacionales y buenas prácticas de calidad de datos con el fin de proponer un marco de referencia que posibilite la publicación de datos abiertos con un nivel de calidad adecuado. El marco de referencia fue validado utilizando un caso de estudio mediante la metodología de investigación en acción. Open data is considered a mechanism of democratization in the access to information generated by public sector organizations and for the development of digital services generated by the infomediary sector. However, this trend has presented some barriers ranging from the insufficient quality of the data published to the lack of maintenance of the portals where they are published. This research carries out an analysis of the state of the issue in the field of open data, as well as of international standards and best practices in data quality in order to propose a frame of reference that enables the publication of open data with an adequate level of quality. The framework of reference was validated using a case study using action research methodology.

Data mining has proven to be very useful in order to extract information from data in many different contexts. However, due to the complexity of data mining techniques, it is required the know-how of an expert in this field to select and use them. Actually, adequately applying data mining is out of the reach of novice users which have expertise in their area of work, but lack skills to employ these techniques. In this paper, we use both model-driven engineering and scientific workflow standards and tools in order to develop named S3Mining framework, which supports novice users in the process of selecting the data mining classification algorithm that better fits with their data and goal. To this aim, this selection process uses the past experiences of expert data miners with the application of classification techniques over their own datasets. The contributions of our S3Mining framework are as follows: (i) an approach to create a knowledge base which stores the past experiences of experts users, (ii) a process that provides the expert users with utilities for the construction of classifiers’ recommenders based on the existing knowledge base, (iii) a system that allows novice data miners to use these recommenders for discovering the classifiers that better fit for solving their problem at hand, and (iv) a public implementation of the framework’s workflows. Finally, an experimental evaluation has been conducted to shown the feasibility of our framework. This work has been partially funded by Spanish Government through the research projects TIN2017-86520-C3-3-R and TIN2016-78103-C2-2-R.

The exploration and use of Semantic Web technologies have attracted considerable attention from researchers examining data warehouse (DW) development. However, the impact of this research and the maturity level of its results are still unclear. The objective of this study is to examine recently published research articles that take into account the use of Semantic Web technologies in the DW arena with the intention of summarizing their results, classifying their contributions to the field according to publication type, evaluating the maturity level of the results, and identifying future research challenges. Three main conclusions were derived from this study: (a) there is a major technological gap that inhibits the wide adoption of Semantic Web technologies in the business domain;(b) there is limited evidence that the results of the analyzed studies are applicable and transferable to industrial use; and (c) interest in researching the relationship between DWs and Semantic Web has decreased because new paradigms, such as linked open data, have attracted the interest of researchers. This study was supported by the Universidad de La Frontera, Chile, PROY. DI15-0020. Universidad de la Frontera, Chile, Grant Numbers: DI15-0020 and DI17-0043.

One of the key issues in developing an open data portal is detecting, selecting, classifying and prioritizing the data of the organization to be opened. It is not a trivial task since organizations (as universities) are rather complex (in terms of staff and existing information systems) and furthermore, data from universities has a rather heterogeneous nature. This paper introduces the “data map” concept as a means to support carrying out this process. A data map aims to help in improving the process of opening data, reaching a high level of automation by considering the required metadata and semantics.

El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo realizar un estudio sobre la conveniencia y viabilidad de adecuar la organización docente del Máster en Desarrollo de Aplicaciones y Servicios Web para el curso 2018/19. Esto viene fundamentado por el trabajo realizado durante los cursos anteriores y evaluación de indicadores obtenidos dentro del proceso de revisión, análisis y mejora del Sistema de Garantía Interna de Calidad del Máster. Dentro de este estudio se han realizado encuestas a estudiantes, se han analizado experiencias de másteres similares que han pasado a modalidad semipresencial, y finalmente se ha elaborado una propuesta de planificación de organización de las asignaturas del máster. En la red se cuenta con todo el profesorado a tiempo completo de la titulación. La documentación elaborada queda a disposición de la Comisión Académica de Máster para ser utilizada en los procesos de seguimiento de la titulación.

El concepto turismo inteligente o “Smart Tourism” se ha convertido en un término de moda ampliamente utilizado por investigadores y profesionales de distintas disciplinas. No obstante, es un concepto que contiene distintos interrogantes que deben ser resueltos para avanzar en el conocimiento científico del tema. Con esta motivación, este artículo contabiliza y categoriza la producción científica asociada, aplicando un estudio de mapeo sistemático, novedoso en el ámbito del turismo. Los resultados obtenidos se combinan para dar respuesta a un conjunto de preguntas de investigación, siguiendo para ello una estrategia o protocolo fundamentado en un proceso sistemático de revisión de la producción científica. The concept of smart tourism has become a buzzword widely used by researchers and practitioners from different disciplines. However, it is a fuzzy concept that contains different questions that must be resolved in order to advance in his scientific knowledge. With this motivation, this article counts and classifies the associated literature, applying a systematic mapping study, a novel method in the field of tourism. The results obtained are combined to answer a set of research questions, following a strategy or protocol based on a systematic process of literature review. El presente trabajo se enmarca en el proyecto de investigación “Análisis de procesos de planificación aplicados a ciudades y destinos turísticos inteligentes. Balance y propuesta metodológica para espacios turísticos: Smart Tourism Planning”. Proyecto CSO2017-82592-R del Programa Estatal de I+D+i del Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad.

La irrupción de Internet y el progresivo despliegue de las tecnologías de la información y comunicación (TIC), ha generado interesantes oportunidades para la planificación y gestión de las ciudades y destinos turísticos del siglo XXI. En este escenario, los entornos urbanos producen una gran cantidad de datos como consecuencia directa del uso intensivo de las TIC. Este trabajo se aproxima al concepto de Open Data desde dos hipótesis. Por una parte, que su aplicación en el ámbito del turismo puede generar un ecosistema innovador que mejore la experiencia turística, gracias al diseño de productos y servicios TIC. Y por otra, que su grado actual de aplicación en turismo es bajo y necesita de medidas de apoyo. Con el fin de corroborarlas, se plantean dos objetivos. En primer lugar, y desde una vertiente teórico-conceptual, profundizar en la terminología de Open Data, conceptos relacionados y sus implicaciones para la gestión turística. En segundo lugar, conocer su grado de aplicación actual en el turismo, para proponer recomendaciones que favorezcan su uso. Con este fin, se analizan los conjuntos de datos abiertos en turismo de las ciudades de la Red Española de Ciudades Inteligentes (RECI). Este trabajo constituye un punto de partida en la investigación de las relaciones entre Open Data y turismo. The emergence of the Internet and the spread of information and communication technologies (ICT) have generated interesting opportunities for the planning and management of cities and tourism destinations of the twenty-first century. In this scenario, urban environments produce a large amount of data as a direct consequence of the intensive use of ICTs. This study addresses the concept of Open Data from two assumptions. On the one hand, that its application in the field of tourism can generate an innovative ecosystem that improves the tourist experience, thanks to the design of ICT products and services. And, on the other, that its current degree of application in tourism is low and needs support measures. In order to corroborate these assumptions, two objectives are proposed. First, and from a theoretical-conceptual perspective, to deepen the terminology of Open Data, related concepts and their implications for tourism management. Second, to determine their current degree of application in tourism, in order to propose recommendations that favor their use. To this end, the Open Data sets in tourism of the Spanish Network of Smart Cities (RECI) are analyzed. This study constitutes a starting point in the research of the relationships between Open Data and tourism. El presente trabajo se enmarca en el proyecto de investigación “Análisis de procesos de planificación aplicados a ciudades y destinos turísticos inteligentes. Balance y propuesta metodológica para espacios turísticos: Smart Tourism Planning”. Proyecto CSO2017-82592-R del Programa Estatal de I+D+i del Ministerio de Economíá, Industria y Competitividad.

Studies on positive plant–plant relations have traditionally focused on pair-wise interactions. Conversely, the interaction with other co-occurring species has scarcely been addressed, despite the fact that the entire community may affect plant performance. We used woody vegetation patches as models to evaluate community facilitation in semi-arid steppes. We characterized biotic and physical attributes of 53 woody patches (patch size, litter accumulation, canopy density, vegetation cover, species number and identity, and phylogenetic distance), and soil fertility (organic C and total N), and evaluated their relative importance for the performance of seedlings of Pistacia lentiscus, a keystone woody species in western Mediterranean steppes. Seedlings were planted underneath the patches, and on their northern and southern edges. Woody patches positively affected seedling survival but not seedling growth. Soil fertility was higher underneath the patches than elsewhere. Physical and biotic attributes of woody patches affected seedling survival, but these effects depended on microsite conditions. The composition of the community of small shrubs and perennial grasses growing underneath the patches controlled seedling performance. An increase in Stipa tenacissima and a decrease in Brachypodium retusum increased the probability of survival. The cover of these species and other small shrubs, litter depth and community phylogenetic distance, were also related to seedling survival. Seedlings planted on the northern edge of the patches were mostly affected by attributes of the biotic community. These traits were of lesser importance in seedlings planted underneath and in the southern edge of patches, suggesting that constraints to seedling establishment differed within the patches. Our study highlights the importance of taking into consideration community attributes over pair-wise interactions when evaluating the outcome of ecological interactions in multi-specific communities, as they have profound implications in the composition, function and management of semi-arid steppes. This research has been funded by project UNCROACH (Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation; CGL2011-30581-C02-01), projects RECUVES and ESTRES (Spanish Ministry of the Environment, Rural and Marine Areas; 077/RN08/04.1and 063/SGTB/2007/7.1), project GRACCIE (Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, Consolider-Ingenio 2010 Program;CSD2007-00067) and Generalitat Valenciana (Programa G. Forteza;FPA/2009/029).

[ES] Se presentan los objetivos, las actividades y las líneas de trabajo de Maredata, una red temática dedicada a la gestión de datos de investigación y financiada por el Plan Estatal de I+D+I. Maredata ha sido creada por cinco grupos de investigación españoles con el propósito de difundir el interés por la gestión de datos de investigación entre la comunidad académica (investigadores, gestores de proyectos, bibliotecarios, etc.) y de generar nuevas líneas de investigación al respecto. [EN] We present the objectives, activities and research lines of Maredata, a thematic network funded by the Spanish National R+D Program. Maredata has been created by five research groups for spreading interest on the research data management among the academic community (not only researchers but also librarians and research managers) and for generating new lines of research.

Esta red tiene como objeto estudiar las necesidades estadísticas a lo largo del Grado en Biología en la Universidad de Alicante y proponer y evaluar herramientas para el autoaprendizaje. Se han conformado dos subgrupos de trabajo, por una parte el profesorado ha recogido información de la demanda de conocimientos estadísticos avanzados y por otra parte, un subgrupo formado por alumnado y el coordinador de la red han hecho una evaluación de dichas necesidades y de las herramientas propuestas para el aprendizaje autónomo. Además se han estudiado las preferencias del alumnado a la hora de enfrentarse a un análisis estadístico avanzado, no contemplado en su formación en el grado. En la mayoría de los casos se ha recurrido a búsqueda de video tutoriales para aprender de manera asíncrona la técnica de análisis, o tutoriales en formato de manuales o ayuda de programas específicos. Finalmente, se ha hecho una propuesta de plantilla de R que facilita la generación automática de informes y así la reproducibilidad de la ciencia.

Context: Data warehouses are systems which integrate heterogeneous sources to support the decision making process. Data from the Web is becoming increasingly more important as sources for these systems, which has motivated the extensive use of XML to facilitate data and metadata interchange among heterogeneous data sources from the Web and the data warehouse. However, the business information that data warehouses manage is highly sensitive and must, therefore, be carefully protected. Security is thus a key issue in the design of data warehouses, regardless of the implementation technology. It is important to note that the idiosyncrasy of the unstructured and semi-structured data requires particular security rules that have been specifically tailored to these systems in order to permit their particularities to be captured correctly. Unfortunately, although security issues have been considered in the development of traditional data warehouses, current research lacks approaches with which to consider security when the target platform is based on XML technology. Objective: We shall focus on defining transformations to obtain a secure XML Schema from the conceptual multidimensional model of a data warehouse. Method: We have first defined the rationale behind the transformation rules and how they have been developed in natural language, and we have then established them clearly and formally by using the QVT language. Finally, in order to validate our proposal we have carried out a case study. Results: We have proposed an approach for the model driven development of Secure XML Data Warehouses, defining a set of QVT transformation rules. Conclusion: The main benefit of our proposal is that it is possible to model security requirements together with the conceptual model of the data warehouse during the early stages of a project, and automatically obtain the corresponding implementation for XML. This research has been carried out in the framework of the following projects: CoMobility (TIN2012-31104) financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, MASAI (TIN-2011-22617) and MESOLAP (TIN2010-14860) financed by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, SISTEMAS (PII2I09-0150-3135) financed by the “Consejería de Ciencia y Tecnología of the Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha”, and BUSINESS (PET2008-0136), financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCI).

Business Intelligence (BI) applications require the design, implementation, and maintenance of processes that extract, transform, and load suitable data for analysis. The development of these processes (known as ETL) is an inherently complex problem that is typically costly and time consuming. In a previous work, the authors have proposed a vendor-independent language for reducing the design complexity due to disparate ETL languages tailored to specific design tools with steep learning curves. Nevertheless, the designer still faces two major issues during the development of ETL processes: (i) how to implement the designed processes in an executable language, and (ii) how to maintain the implementation when the organization data infrastructure evolves. In this paper, the authors propose a model-driven framework that provides automatic code generation capability and ameliorate maintenance support of our ETL language. They present a set of model-to-text transformations able to produce code for different ETL commercial tools as well as model-to-model transformations that automatically update the ETL models with the aim of supporting the maintenance of the generated code according to data source evolution. A demonstration using an example is conducted as an initial validation to show that the framework covering modeling, code generation and maintenance could be used in practice.

Several surveys have indicated that many data warehouses fail to meet business objectives or are outright failures. One reason for this is that requirement engineering is typically overlooked in real projects. This paper addresses data warehouse design from a business perspective by highlighting business strategy analysis, alignment between data warehouse objectives and a firm’s strategy, goal-oriented information requirements’ modelling and how an underlying multidimensional data warehouse model may be derived. A set of guidelines is provided allowing developers to design a data warehouse aligned with a prevailing business strategy. A classic case study is presented. Varios trabajos indican que un porcentaje significativo de los almacenes de datos no cumplen con los objetivos del negocio o que son fracasos rotundos. Una de las razones consiste en que la ingeniería de requerimientos es pasada por alto en proyectos reales. En este trabajo el diseño del almacén de datos es abordado desde un punto de vista empresarial, en el que se da relevancia al análisis de la estrategia del negocio, la alineación entre los objetivos del almacén de datos y la estrategia de la empresa, un modelo de objetivos que permite obtener los requisitos de información y la derivación del modelo multidimensional del almacén. Proveemos un conjunto de directrices que permite a los desarrolladores diseñar un almacén de datos alineado a la estrategia del negocio. Se presenta un caso de estudio clásico.

El objetivo de este trabajo es hacer un estudio del estado actual en cuanto a necesidades de análisis estadístico a lo largo del Grado en Biología. Principalmente, detectar la necesidad de formación estadística en general en las prácticas de los distintos años de dicho grado. A partir de las necesidades analíticas detectadas, se propondrán las soluciones para cada caso y la mejor manera de poner a disposición del alumnado la solución propuesta, así como el mecanismo de evaluación apropiado. Esta propuesta es en sí mismo una mejora de la formación integral y la capacidad analítica del alumnado del Grado en Biología. Finalmente, todo el material y mecanismos generados se pondrán a disposición del alumnado.

Las competencias establecidas en el currículum transversal de la Universidad de Alicante (competencias transversales) son fundamentales para los egresados de nuestras titulaciones tanto para aumentar su empleabilidad como para dotarlos de herramientas que puedan poner en práctica como ciudadanas y ciudadanos en su vida diaria. Sin embargo, parece que las competencias transversales no se tienen en cuenta de una manera formal y, por tanto, no se establece como trabajarlas y evaluarlas de manera coordinada entre todas las asignaturas de una titulación, de tal manera que los estudiantes las adquieran de una manera exitosa. En esta red de investigación en docencia universitaria se ha comenzado a analizar el desarrollo de las competencias transversales por parte de las asignaturas del Grado en Ingeniería Informática con el fin conocer el estado actual y empezar a planificar la adquisición de competencias transversales de los estudiantes de manera coordinada (incluyendo entre otras, el trabajo en equipo, hablar en público, liderazgo y el idioma inglés).

Lately, the University of Alicante (Spain) started the OpenData4U project in order to create a methodology to easily develop open data portals for universities. Within this project, the open data portal of the University of Alicante was launched (http://datos.ua.es), which allowed us to develop a set of best practices in the implantation of an open data ecosystem for universities to foster reusing of Public Sector Information. The main aim of this paper is to describe our experience at the opening data process at the University of Alicante, as well as enumerating novel opportunities for social and economic impact in which a university could be a driving force.

Due to the large, heterogeneous audience of Web applications, and its rapidly changing expectations, holistic requirement analysis approaches are crucial to ensure the success of Web engineering projects. To increase the quality of resulting Web applications, non-functional requirements (NFRs) must be considered. Satisfying them is a non-trivial task that depends on making decisions about which functional requirements (FRs) to implement, and how to prioritize the NFRs. A satisfactory solution is a trade-off, where competing NFRs must be balanced. In this paper, we outline how the Pareto efficiency can complement a goal-oriented requirement analysis modelling to evaluate and select optimal configurations of requirements for a Web application, while NFRs are balanced and maximized according to a priority list. We hereby focus on an empirical evaluation to verify whether our Pareto method improves the accuracy of design decisions during the requirements analysis phase, and/or if it reduces the time needed by designers. Este trabajo ha sido parcialmente financiado por los siguientes proyectos: Open.Mind (GV/2014/098) de la Generalitat Valenciana; PROFAPI2012/002 y PROFAPI2013/002 de la Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, México y MANTRA (GRE09-17) de la Universidad de Alicante.

El Trabajo Fin de Grado (TFG) es una asignatura con unas características especiales y de nueva instauración en la mayoría de los grados de las universidades españolas. El objetivo de este estudio fue analizar la implementación y desarrollo del TFG con el fin de evaluar posibles carencias y, en su caso, poner medidas para corregirlas. Para este fin, se realizaron encuestas específicas tanto a alumnos que estaban en ese momento finalizando el TFG como a profesores que estaban tutorizando o habían tutorizado TFGs. En base a los resultados obtenidos creemos que se debería trabajar más en la orientación e información a los alumnos, de los distintos aspectos del TFG mediante charlas informativas. La dedicación docente derivada de la tutorización de los TFGs debería tenerse en cuenta en el cómputo de horas lectivas del POD. Adicionalmente, el tutor de un TFG debería formar parte en la evaluación de dicho TFG. La normativa de los TFGs debería ser menos rígida para favorecer los trámites administrativos. Especialmente importante sería dotar a la aplicación UA-project de una mayor flexibilidad.

Esta red de investigación en docencia universitaria ha centrado sus objetivos en la coordinación de las actividades transversales en el módulo básico de los Grados en Biología y en Ciencias del Mar. Además, entre los intereses principales de la red se ha fijado la evaluación y propuestas de mejora de la planificación de las actividades con carga no presencial. En las sucesivas reuniones se ha contado con la participación de los delegados y delegadas de los distintos grupos y sus contribuciones han permitido incorporar la opinión del alumnado. Así, se ha establecido un primer análisis de la problemática a abordar en los siguientes años para mejorar la coordinación transversal y vertical en ambos grados, así como también se ha buscado una solución a todos los inconvenientes que han surgido a lo largo del semestre. Se plantea a su vez la mejora en la distribución de la carga semanal para evitar que haya semanas con mucha carga de horas no presenciales. Finalmente, se ha coordinado las competencias transversales en las asignaturas que comparten estos objetivos.

El Máster Universitario en Ingeniería Informática de la Universidad de Alicante está regulado según las recomendaciones establecidas para la ordenación de las enseñanzas de Máster en el ámbito de la Ingeniería Informática, ofreciendo una formación avanzada en las tecnologías de la informática que capacita para la elaboración, planificación, dirección y coordinación de proyectos, así como su gestión técnica y económica en todos los ámbitos de la ingeniería informática, siguiendo criterios de calidad y medioambientales. El propósito principal de este trabajo de investigación docente es el seguimiento y coordinación de la docencia semipresencial en las asignaturas del Máster Universitario en Ingeniería Informática, tanto en la metodología docente como en los materiales y la carga de trabajo para el alumnado. Puesto que la implantación de la semipresencialidad es novedosa en este curso, es especialmente importante la coordinación entre todas las asignaturas y el seguimiento del desarrollo académico para detectar y solventar los posibles problemas que puedan aparecer y establecer un plan de mejoras que permita la mejora continua de la titulación. Para ello, se han realizado reuniones de coordinación de todos los responsables de asignaturas del Máster y reuniones con el alumnado para comprobar el progreso académico a lo largo del curso.

En este artículo se describe el trabajo realizado por la red de investigación en docencia universitaria denominada “Docencia semipresencial en el Máster en Ingeniería Informática” y que ha pretendido trabajar en las diferentes asignaturas del Máster en Ingeniería Informática de la Universidad de Alicante con el fin de dotarlas de un carácter semipresencial de una forma coordinada e integrada. Se ha creado un grupo de trabajo dentro de la comisión académica del máster y se ha impulsado una colaboración estrecha entre los responsables de todas las asignaturas del Máster en Ingeniería Informática a la hora de usar todos los mecanismos necesarios para dotar a las respectivas asignaturas del carácter semipresencial. Ha sido muy importante el apoyo que se ha tenido del ICE en este sentido, por ejemplo mediante la solicitud y realización de un curso específico sobre bLearning.

El fomento de la calidad universitaria es una dimensión clave en el EEES que se basa en sistemas de garantía y mejora de la calidad internos en las universidades y en procedimientos llevados a cabo por agencias de evaluación y acreditación externas a ellas. Además, se resalta que cada vez es más necesario que estas acreditaciones de calidad nacionales se reconozcan fuera del propio país. En este contexto ha surgido la creación de sellos de calidad europeos que están enfocados a determinados sectores científico-técnicos o profesionales que tienen la ventaja de facilitar la comparación transfronteriza y ofrecer a universidades y egresados la posibilidad de demostrar la calidad de sus titulaciones en el ámbito europeo. En el caso de los Grados en Ingeniería Informática es el sello EURO-INF regulado por la European Quality Assurance Network for Informatics Education (EQANIE) el que garantiza que la calidad de los programas en informática se corresponde con los criterios europeos genéricos establecidos y que sus egresados adquieren las competencias definidas para este sello. En esta memoria se explica el trabajo realizado para el proceso de acreditación y solicitud del sello EURO-INF como un doble proceso aprovechando las sinergias entre ambos procedimientos.

Implantación de los nuevos Grados, como sustitución de las Licenciaturas en los estudios universitarios, lleva consigo un proceso de Reacreditación, consistente en la revisión de una serie de parámetros de calidad, a realizar una vez terminada su implantación. Este proceso se ha desarrollado en tres ámbitos principales: la Gestión del Título, los Recursos de los que se dispone y, por último, los Resultados, y tiene como fin principal evaluar si los resultados obtenidos son adecuados para garantizar la continuidad de la impartición del Grado. El equipo de trabajo que ha llevado a cabo la revisión y ha puesto en marcha los procesos de mejora en el Grado de Biología de la Facultad de Ciencias de la Universidad de Alicante ha sido la Comisión de Título. La revisión que dicha Comisión ha realizado se ha centrado en evaluar la adquisición de competencias por parte de los estudiantes, en los recursos humanos y materiales que soportan el desarrollo del título, y en el análisis de la evolución de los resultados del mismo. Toda la información generada en este grupo de trabajo, ha sido volcada a la aplicación “AstUA” con la que se gestionan los programas de calidad de toda la Universidad de Alicante.

Obtaining an implementation of a data warehouse is a complex task that forces designers to acquire wide knowledge of the domain, thus requiring a high level of expertise and becoming it a prone-to-fail task. Based on our experience, we have detected a set of situations we have faced up with in real-world projects in which we believe that the use of ontologies will improve several aspects of the design of data warehouses. The aim of this article is to describe several shortcomings of current data warehouse design approaches and discuss the benefit of using ontologies to overcome them. This work is a starting point for discussing the convenience of using ontologies in data warehouse design., Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures

Abrasion platforms with vermetids shape unique seascapes and biotic assemblages that characterize several of the warm Mediterranean coasts. The composition, structural and seasonal dynamics of the platforms’ phytobenthos were examined at two Southeast Iberian locations through non-destructive sampling. The patterns observed were linked with environmental variables and grazers’ coverage, and we assessed their possible influence. Structural descriptors α-diversity and β-diversity were applied, pointing that depth and season-related variables were the major influencing drivers. Higher α-diversity and β-diversity values during winter and spring coincided with the production optimum of the community. A greater average water depth influences the abundance of both midlittoral and infralittoral taxa. The strong resemblance between the phytobenthos of these vermetid platforms and that on similar platforms in the Eastern and Central Mediterranean Sea suggests that these are affected by the same structuring mechanisms. This research received financial assistance from the project “Seguimiento de macroalgas sobre el litoral rocoso y Posidonia de la Comunidad Valenciana, dentro de la Directiva Marco del Agua” of the Generalitat Valenciana.

Tras la vorágine de las renovaciones y nuevos diseños de todas las titulaciones universitarias, llegan momentos de calma, de análisis y de reflexión. Los másteres caracterizarán a las universidades. Y aunque el Máster en Ingeniería Informática sigue unas fichas comunes, debe imbricarse con la universidad y el contexto social en el que se implanta. En este artículo se hace uso de los conceptos de las metodologías ágiles para describir el proceso de diseño e implantación del Máster en Ingeniería Informática de la Escuela Politécnica Superior de la Universidad de Alicante. Desde su implantación este Máster ha seguido un proceso de mejora continua, identificando, en cada curso, los posibles aspectos de mejora a partir de la información recogida durante los cursos anteriores y las propuestas para realizar dichas mejoras para los cursos siguientes. Se pretende en este artículo describir las experiencias, lecciones aprendidas y futuros pasos encaminados a afianzar este proceso de mejora continua del Máster en Ingeniería Informática.

El grado de Ciencias del Mar ha seguido, en los últimos cursos académicos, un proceso exhaustivo de seguimiento a través del uso de las comisiones de semestre (8 para todo el grado) en las que se ha favorecido la puesta en común, entre el profesorado y las/los responsables del alumnado, de las fortalezas y debilidades observadas en las diferentes asignaturas de cada semestre, así como la propuesta de actividades que impulsarían la calidad docente. El seguimiento ha permitido mejorar la coherencia tanto en la distribución de contenidos como en las metodologías docentes y de evaluación, así como facilitar una coordinación vertical entre materias de diferentes cursos. Las mejoras propuestas podrán servir, por tanto, como punto de partida para las futuras revisiones del grado. Adicionalmente, la firma de un convenio marco con la Universidad de Vigo, por el que se comprometían a intercambiar experiencias y personal en los campos de la docencia, la investigación y la cultura en general, dentro de las áreas que comportan un interés manifiesto, ha permitido al profesorado, coordinado por el centro, el diseño una actividad interuniversitaria transversal para las asignaturas del segundo semestre de segundo curso, que se incorporará a las fichas UA del grado para el curso 2015-16. Entre las modalidades de colaboración se incluye el intercambio, por tiempo limitado, de estudiantes, profesores e investigadores. Aunque la actividad interunivesitaria que se ha diseñado, bajo el marco de este convenio, se ha planificado para el segundo semestre del segundo curso se espera que, en el futuro, pueda extenderse a otros cursos y/u otras universidades.

Una vez implantado completamente el Grado de Ciencias del Mar en la Universidad de Alicante y a punto de finalizar la segunda promoción, es el momento de revisar el funcionamiento del programa formativo. Por una parte, es necesario continuar con el intenso trabajo de coordinación horizontal y vertical para asegurar la coherencia en contenidos, metodologías, evaluación y guías docentes. Y por otra parte, hay que evaluar si los posibles errores detectados con anterioridad han sido resueltos. Como metodología de trabajo, desde la Facultad de Ciencias se han constituido ocho comisiones de semestre. Cada una de estas comisiones está integrada por un coordinador de semestre, los responsables de las asignaturas de ese semestre, el coordinador del Grado y el/la delegado/a del alumnado. Cada una de estas comisiones se reúne, por lo menos, dos veces por curso. Los resultados de este trabajo permiten la detección de problemas actuales y si las medidas adoptadas han sido útiles para solucionar incidencias pasadas.

El Trabajo Fin de Grado (TFG) en los grados de la Facultad de Ciencias, constituye una asignatura con importantes competencias transversales que representa la fase final del plan de estudios, y supone la realización por parte del estudiante de un proyecto, memoria o estudio bajo la supervisión de un tutor o tutora. En este trabajo se realiza un estudio general de los TFGs y la utilización del UA-project, desde la visión del profesorado. Para poder optimizar el desarrollo de los TFGs, en este trabajo se realizó un análisis interno mediante un cuestionario. Para dar mayor amplitud y proyección a la propuesta se han enviado los cuestionarios a profesores de todos los grados de la Facultad de Ciencias: Biología, Ciencias del Mar, Química, Geología, Matemáticas y Óptica y Optometría. Estos cuestionarios reflejan la experiencia docente obtenida en los últimos años en la tutorización de los TFGs, para así poder obtener conclusiones e ideas de mejora para su posterior aplicación.

Con el curso académico 2013-2014 finaliza la implantación de los títulos de Grado en la Universidad de Alicante, y con ello se abre un período de análisis de este proceso que será la antesala de la evaluación y la acreditación de títulos. Los actuales títulos de Grado se diseñaron en un escenario socio-cultural-económico muy diferente al que se ha tenido durante el proceso de implantación. Los recortes en la financiación han sido el principal desencadenante de una dinámica en la que tanto aquellos involucrados en la gestión como los encargados de las tareas docentes han tenido que asumir la impartición de materias en grupos numerosos, con falta de recursos y una interpretación cuanto menos ambigua del concepto “evaluación continua”. Asimismo, los recortes en los programas de becas han tenido efectos tanto en el número y tipo de matrículas como en la participación del alumnado en programas de movilidad. Este trabajo pretende ser un resumen del análisis de resultados relativos a la implantación del Grado en Biología en la Universidad de Alicante para su posterior uso en el diseño de estrategias de mejora para la docencia en este título.

Mediante encuestas a estudiantes que se encuentran finalizando el Trabajo de Fin de Grado (TFG) y profesores que dirigen de los seis grados de la facultad de Ciencias (Biología, Ciencias del Mar, Geología, Matemáticas, Óptica y Optometría, Química) de la Universidad de Alicante, se han identificado los puntos de menor fortaleza de los TFGs independientemente para cada grado. A continuación, hemos comparado los resultados entre grados para ver el nivel de similitud entre ellos y la singularidad de cada uno de ellos. A partir de ahí, hemos identificado los posibles factores que configuran cada TFG con el fin de intentar entender su singularidad en cada caso. Esta información es importante para ayudarnos a comprender cómo se podrían fortalecer posibles carencias en TFGs específicos. Con esta información y en base a la experiencia previa, proponemos medidas que permitan favorecer la implementación y desarrollo de los TFGs. Con estas propuestas se espera mejorar la eficiencia de los TFGs y conseguir un mayor nivel de satisfacción y el rendimiento en esta asignatura común en todos los grados.

Este estudio tiene el objetivo de obtener una percepción desde el punto de vista del alumnado del Trabajo de Fin de Grado (TFG). Para ello, se realizaron encuestas a estudiantes de grado que están finalizando el (TFG) en la facultad de Ciencias (Biología, Ciencias del Mar, Geología, Matemáticas, Óptica y Optometría, y Química) de la Universidad de Alicante. En un principio, se analizaron para cada grado de forma independiente con el propósito de tener una visión global de la percepción de los alumnos para cada grado. A continuación, se contrastaron los resultados obtenidos entre los grados para buscar posibles similitudes entre ellos y entender las singularidades de cada uno. Mediante este estudio podemos conocer la opinión sobre TFG desde el punto de vista del alumnado. Dichos resultados pueden sentar las bases para enriquecer y optimizar el desarrollo de los TFGs con el fin de favorecer su capacidad formativa al ser una asignatura obligatoria común en todos los grados.

En esta memoria se describe el trabajo de la red docente para el seguimiento y control de calidad de las asignaturas del segundo curso del Grado en Ingeniería Informática impartido en la Escuela Politécnica Superior de la Universidad de Alicante. En esta edición, el trabajo de la red se ha centrado en el estudio de las necesidades formativas y los contenidos impartidos en las asignaturas. El resultado ha sido la creación de un grafo de dependencias entre asignaturas de segundo y primer curso (y de segundo curso entre sí), un mapa de necesidades formativas para acceder a las asignaturas de segundo curso y un mapa de los contenidos impartidos en éstas. Asimismo, se ha elaborado un calendario on-line de evaluaciones para el curso 2014-2015.