Visibility of European Higher Education Area initiatives in Spanish universities home websites

Luis M. SNCHEZ-RUIZ, Mnica E. EDWARDS & Enrique BALLESTER-SARRIAS

Polytechnic University of Valencia Valencia, Camino de Vera N 14-46022, Spain

ABSTRACT

Higher education in Europe is undergoing a profound transformation and also holds significant implications for the information exchange between the different educative systems. Internet represents a powerful tool of communication and dissemination of ideas, plans and multiple actions enabling to share planning and initiatives, providing efficient access to a connectivity environment. In this paper we report on the results of an exploratory analysis of visibility about the European Higher Education Area topics in Spanish universities websites. We intend to answer basic questions that arise in a natural way: is actually information of the European Higher Education Area available in the majority of Spanish universities websites, and in what extent? The goal of this analysis is twofold. Firstly, we explore different features related to the European Higher Education Area content (quality and quantity, general web page characteristics, actualization, etc.). Secondly, we comment how easily this content is may be reached. For this study it has considered a sample of N = 56 Spanish universities, most of them public, but some private universities have also been studied. Keywords: European Higher Education Area, websites, universities, networks, information. 1. INTRODUCTION The construction of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) requires promoting the convergence of the different national higher education systems. Since the Bologna Declaration students, teachers, and staff at higher education institutions as well as political decision makers have been working together in the transformation of European universities [1]. On other hand, Internet has become a powerful tool of communication and dissemination of ideas, plans and multiple actions enabling to share planning and initiatives [2]. Bologna objectives have been benefited by this environment and we find a blossoming of innovative networks between different groups of people and institutions at national and international levels. In this technological world websites usually become the first external image of the University, sometimes they may even become the only source of information for outsider. Since the websites are the first shopwindow where heterogeneous people (students, teachers,

researchers, administrative staff, etc.) can consult the subjects they are interested in by interacting with the institutions. Also there is a considerable body of evidence to show that patterns of web linking between universities can be strongly associated with research productivity [3]. Universities should make an effort in order with the aim that its visitors meet their needs and expectations. In this line, websites should be integrated in such away that they support best practice in its communication, marketing, teaching and learning, research, administration, and transactional functions. With this perspective, in this paper we present an analysis on visibility about the European Higher Education Area topics in Spanish universities websites. We intend to answer two questions: is actually information of the European Higher Education Area available in all Spanish universities websites? How visible is this presence? In the middle of this proliferation of ideas and different possibilities of developing the universities curricula structure and organization within the European Higher Education Area, in this work we intend to study how Spanish universities show through their websites how they are tackling these issues. With this purpose we analyze different features, as the European Higher Education Area related content (quality and quantity, web page characteristics and actualization) and how easily this content is may be reached, among other aspects [4]-[5][6]. 2. THE EUROPEAN CONVERGENCE PROCESS The Bologna Declaration was issued following a meeting of the European Ministers of Education held in Bologna in 1999, and set into motion a process (thus the Bologna process other the European convergence process) aimed at creating a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) by 2010 [7]-[8]. To achieve this goal, the Declaration called for the following: Adoption of a system of easily readable and comparable degrees Adoption of a degree structure based on two main cycles (undergraduate and graduate) Adoption of a common system of credits (to enable students to transfer and accumulate credits) called the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) Elimination of obstacles that impede mobility of students and job seekers

Promotion of European cooperation in quality assurance Promotion of necessary European dimension in higher education [1]. Hence, the long term objectives of the reforms outlined in the Bologna process are essentially threefold: 1) To facilitate the speedy entrance of educated professionals into the job market through shortened degrees. 2) To enhance the cross-border mobility of students and job seekers, in a multicultural enriched context. 3) To increase the competitiveness of European higher education internationally [8]-[9]. The Bologna process is a massive undertaking that encompasses most of Europe, and continues to expand geographically picking up new member states at each ministerial meeting. Originally, there were 29 signatory countries to the Bologna Declaration, and shortly thereafter Liechtenstein was retroactively added. Then in 2001 at the Prague conference, Cyprus, Croatia and Turkey joined. At the meeting in Berlin last September 2003, seven more countries (Albania, Andorra, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Holy See, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) were admitted bringing the number up to 40. With Russias membership, the Bologna Process now literally stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific. When it is completed in 2010, the EHEA will include over 12 million students and 4.000 universities across Europe. An educational reform movement on such a grand scale has never before been attempted in Europe, or elsewhere for that matter. The breakneck speed at which the reforms are being implemented has taken many observers and especially skeptics by complete surprise. Many of them are particularly astounded at the way the Bologna process is shaking up and reformulating traditional structures of higher education that have remained unchanged for centuries [10]. Some investigations show that the 80% of the signatory countries have already introduced the twotiered degree structure, clearly dividing undergraduate from graduate studies. More than half of all participating institutions of higher education (53 %) are currently implementing the Bologna reforms, while just over a third (36 %) is still in the planning phase. Only 11 % of these institutions have indicated they are not interested in adopting the two-tiered system [10]. While the reforms are being implemented within the signatory countries, the planners of the EHEA are beginning to look beyond Europe. In Berlin and the following meeting, the Ministers of Education advocated the need to encourage cooperation with other parts of the world, and to open up future Bologna events to representatives of non-European countries. In particular, they declared the necessity to actively promote the new EHEA abroad to attract students and researchers from non-participating countries.

3. UNIVERSITIES WEBSITES AND THE MOVEMENT TO EHEA University websites define, within the digital surroundings, the image of the University in the outside. They become not only element of communication and publicity of the structure and activities celebrated in the University although of its philosophy, organization and strategic position. On Universities websites the user can consult diverse services and a lot of activities: general information, academic structure, sports, library, publications, research, innovation networks, forum and news, etc. They allow to consult information and e-mails of the teaching staff, as well as to put themselves in contact with the University from any part of the planet. In addition, is an instrument to show the institutional culture and the own identity. The Universitys web site should meet user needs and expectations, and be integrated to support best practice in its marketing, teaching and learning, research, information, communication, administration, and transactional functions. At respect, a web site' s ultimate success depends upon its quality, distribution, and many other competitive factors including its size, language, age, visibility, popularity and its impact factor, among other aspects [11]. In this environment and considering the European convergence process, staffing executives and agents who are responsible for university hiring need to understand their relative position to other universities through comparing performance, processes and best practices. For this reason, we have considered that analysis of universities websites can provide a global vision about the Spain initiatives within EHEA movement. We try to answer the following questions: are Spanish initiatives for EHEA visible in their websites? Are new networks related to this issue emerging? 4. METHODOLOGY AND SAMPLE There have been many attempts to evaluate Web spaces on the basis of the information that they provide, their form or functionality, or even the importance given to each of them by the Web itself [12]-[13]-[14]. In general, the indicators that have been developed for this purpose fall into two groups: those based on the study of a Web spaces formal characteristics, and those related to its link structure [11]. Research has shown that the link structure of the Web offers some important information for analyzing the relevance and quality of Web pages [14]. Intuitively, the author of a Web page A, who places a link to Web page B, believes that B is relevant to A. The term in-links refers to the hyperlinks pointing to a page. Usually, the larger the number of in-links, the higher a page will be rated. The rationale is similar to citation analysis, in which an often-cited article is considered better than one never cited. The assumption is made that if two pages are linked to each other, they are likely to be on the same topic. One study [15] actually found that the likelihood of linked pages having similar textual content was high, if

one considered random pairs of pages on the Web. Anchor text is the word or phrase that hyperlinks to a target page. Anchor text can provide a good source of information about a target page because it represents how people linking to the page actually describe it. Several studies have tried to use either the anchor text or the text near it to predict a target page' s content [16]. Although researchers have developed several analysis algorithms over the past few years and there are various methods in recent disciplines as Cybermetrics, Netometrics, Internetmetrics and Webometrics [11], our study has been realised with a more simplistic approach. Our analysis, in exploratory phase, begins with a sample of N = 56 Spanish Universities (it is detailed in the Annex), considering the following aspects: Pages and Log (pages) for introduction of EHEA expression. These indicators show, respectively, the number of page associated with the EHEA topics mention. We have considered links from the first page (home) to four. Content access facility, analyzing the difficult level (easy, average and difficult to find EHEA issues within the website). Sometimes, EHEA logo is in the first page, in other cases the ECTS guide (Information Package) is the only reference. Content weight amount related to the quality and quantity of information (measure with the scale 1 to 5). There have been many studies aimed at evaluating Web spaces on the basis both of the information that they provide and of their form. The ultimate goal of such studies is to identify the characteristics of Web spaces that best satisfy the requirements of users who browse through them [17]. Following the idea mentioned above, be more objective, this indicator is based exclusively on the formal characteristics of Web spaces, in particular, all those that we have been able to determine automatically for each page. For these characteristics to be equivalent for purposes of comparison (i.e., equiparable), it was first necessary to assign them a weight according to their relevance for retrieval of any requested information [11]-[18]. Also considered in this evaluation the External Links, the quality content (national and international information about EHEA, official documents, events, meetings, glossaries, projects). Links with noncritical problems, outlinks in Web spaces that do not function correctly because of some type of problem considered of minor importance (e.g., Temporary or Permanent Redirect). Pages that have been unchanged for the last 6 months. Innovation networks references at national or international level. For example, Tuning project [19].

5. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The Fig. 1 shows that EHEA expression is in the first page of the 41,1% of University websites, and with a percentage of 17,2 in the second page. Generally, it appears with a logo or as part of the organizational structure (Convergence Office, Vice-rectorate, etc.). However, in the 21.4% of the analysed cases the information is hidden and it is difficult to find topics related to the EHEA.

100 80 60 % 40 20 0

1st page

2nd page

3rd page

4th page

> 4th

Fig. 1. Access to EHEA expression in Spanish websites

The general tittles in the introduction of EHEA issues are usually in English, but the contents are in Spanish or in other local community languages (cataln, euskera, galego, valenciano). The majority of websites are in Spanish language (and without English translation possibility), and this situation is unfavourable for the information exchange at international level. In the Fig. 2 it shows the level of difficulty to find the EHEA expression, only it results easy in the 39.3 % of the revised webs. And the percentage where this task is difficult or impossible ascends to 33.9 %.
100 80 60 % 40 20 0

easy

average

difficult

Fig. 2. Level of difficulty for accessing to the EHEA contents

These problems are caused for the diversity in the links situation within the organizational structure of each University. Sometimes, EHEA links are depending of Vice-rectorates in different areas (planning, teaching, international relations, European convergence) or is constituted as European Convergence Office.

The quality of the websites is very variable in quality and quantity information and its dynamic access. The majority is focused in national and local aspects, as adaptation projects at institutional or inter institutional levels and has no possibility of interaction in discussion forums.

100 80
%

60 40 20 0 5 4 3 2 1 0

Fig. 3. Percentage of websites with valuation of quality and quantity information level of EHEA contents (from 5 = high level to 0 = nothing)

The 62.5% of the websites is very good documented in EHEA topics, but only the 33.9% has high level of information at both national and European levels. Only the 33% of the analysed websites contain activities related to research networks on higher education or provide information about innovation activity with European projection.
6. CONCLUSION

The visibility of EHEA on websites shows indirectly the achievements of the Spanish universities and identifies remaining obstacles and weaknesses to the advances in the harmonisation of the educative systems and the construction of the European Higher Education Area. It is necessary a major visibility of the interactions and transparency of information for the different stakeholders. In this study we have explored and showed that further efficiency gains could be reaped from networking national and regional initiatives, sharing information and experience and learning from each other. The improvement of high levels of connectivity into the universities networks may have a significant impact on the EHEA as a whole, in terms of efficiency expected to materialise the Bologna objectives.
7. REFERENCES
[1] The Bologna Declaration on the European space for higher

education. http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/policies/educ/bologna/ bologna.pdf 1999. [2] M. E. Porter. Strategy and the Internet. Harvard Bussiness Review. 2001. [3] M. Thelwall & G. Harries. The Connection between the Research of a University and Counts of Links to its Web Pages: An Investigation Based Upon a Classification of the

Relationships of Pages to the Research of the Host University. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 54, No. 7, 2003, pp. 594-602. [4] M. Thelwall & D. Wilkinson, D. Three Target Document Range Metrics for University Websites. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 54, No. 6, 2003, pp. 489-496. [5] L. Bjorneborn & P. Ingwersen. Perspectives of Webometrics. Scientometrics, Vol. 50, No. 1, 2001, pp. 65-82. [6] R. Baeza-Yates; C. Castillo & V. Lpez. Characteristics of the Web of Spain. Scientometrics, Vol. 9 No. 1, p. 3. http://cybermetrics.cindoc.csic.es/cybermetrics/articles/v9i1 p3.html [7] ENQA (European Network for Quality Assurance in Higher Education). Quality procedures in European Higher Education. Helsinki: The Danish Evaluation Institute. http://www.enqa.net/texts/procedures.pdf 2003. [8] S. Reichert. y C. Tauch. Progress towards the European Higher Education Area. Forward form Berlin: the role of universities: to 2010 and beyond. Leuven: European University Association (EUA). 2003a. [9] J. Gonzlez y R. Wagenaar (Eds.). Tuning Educational Structures in Europe. University of Deusto and Groningen: Deusto. 2003. [10] S. Reichert y C. Tauch. Trends in Learning Estructures in European Higher Education III. Bologna four year after: Steps towards sustainable reform of higher education in Europe. http://eua.uni-graz.at/Trends3-Graz-draft.pdf 2003b. [11] C. Faba-Prez, F. Zapico-Alonso, V.Guerrero-Bote & F. de Moya-Anegn. Comparative Analysis of Webometric Measurements in Thematic Environments. Journal Of The American Society For Information Science And Technology, Vol. 56, No. 8, 2005, pp. 779-785. [12] T. Bray. Measuring the Web. The World Wide Web Journal, Vol. 1, No. 3. 1996. [13] L. Codina. Parmetros e indicadores de calidad para la evaluacin de recursos digitales. In VII Jornadas Espaolas de Documentacin. Bilbao, October 1921, pp. 135144. 2000. [14] D. Gibson, J. Kleinberg and P. Raghavan. Inferring Web Communities from Link Topology". In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. 1998. [15] G. W. Flake, S. Lawrence and C. Lee Giles. Efficient Identification of Web Communities. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGKDD, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. 2000. [16] E. Amitay. Using Common Hypertext Links to Identify the Best Phrasal Description of Target Web Documents. In Proceedings of the ACM Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR 98), Melbourne, Australia. 1998. [17] Y. Ma. A design analysis model for developing World Wide Web sites. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, Vol. 53, No. 7, 2002, pp. 531535. [18] C. Faba-Prez, V. P. Guerrero-Bote & F. Moya-Anegn. Fundamentos y Tcnicas Cibermtricas. Mrida: Junta de Extremadura. 2004. [19] J. Gonzlez y R. Wagenaar (Eds.). Tuning Educational Structures in Europe. University of Deusto and Groningen: Deusto. 2003.

ANNEX

University U. d' Alacant U. de Alcal U. Alfonso X El Sabio U. de Almera U. Antonio de Nebrija U. Autnoma de Barcelona U. Autnoma de Madrid U. de Barcelona U. de Burgos U. de Cdiz U. de Cantabria U. Carlos III de Madrid U. Castilla La Mancha U. Catlica Santa Teresa de Avila U. Catlica de Valencia San Vicente Mrtir U. Complutense de Madrid U. de Crdoba U. da Corua U. de Deusto U. del Pas Vasco U. de Extremadura U. de Girona U. de Granada U. de Huelva U. de les Illes Balears U. de Jan U. Jaume I U. de La Laguna U. de La Rioja U. de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria U. de Len U. de Lleida U. de Mlaga U. Miguel Hernndez D' Elx U. de Murcia U. de Navarra U. Oberta de Catalunya U. de Oviedo U. Pablo de Olavide U. Politcnica de Catalunya U. Politcnica de Madrid U. Politcnica de Valencia U. Pontificia Comillas U. Pontificia de Salamanca U. Pblica de Navarra U. Rey Juan Carlos U. Rovira i Virgili

EHEA website access http://www.eees.ua.es/ http://www.uah.es/universidad/espacio_europeo/ http://www.uax.es/Internacionales/ects/indice.htm http://web.ual.es/web/pInicio.jsp?id=1616 http://www.nebrija.com/titulaciones/internacional.htm

http://www.uab.es/servlet/Satellite?cid=1096479303876&pagename=UAB%2FPage%2 FTemplatePlanaModel1 http://www.uam.es/europea/reunionescongresosyseminarios.html http://www.ub.edu/ub/europa/ http://www.ubu.es/eees/ http://www.uca.es/web/estudios/eees http://www.unican.es/WebUC/Internet/eees/ http://www.uc3m.es/uc3m/eees/ http://www.uclm.es/espacioeuropeoes/ https://www.ucavila.es/downloads/EEES.pdf ? http://www.ucm.es/info/ucmp/pags.php?COOKIE_SET=1&tp=Espacio%20Europeo%2 0de%20Educacin%20Superior&a=documentos&d=0000084.php ? http://www.udc.es/eees/GA/default.asp http://www2.relint.deusto.es/servlet/Satellite?pagename=UniversidadDeusto/Page/Pagi naCollTemplate&c=Page&cid=1117441330501&localizador=%231117441330501&hiz kuntza=_ingl http://www.ehu.es/eees/ http://www.unex.es/unex/gobierno/direccion/vicedoc/estructura/planif_academica/eees https://pserv.udg.es/udgeuropa/default.aspx http://www.ugr.es/comisionado-eees/ http://www.uhu.es/vic.docente/ http://www.uib.es/servei/ocihe/ http://www.ujaen.es/serv/vicord/secretariado/secplan/conver.htm http://www.uji.es/CA/canals/eeu/ http://www.ull.es/docencia/cr_europeo.html ? http://www.ulpgc.es/index.php?pagina=espacioeuropeo&ver=inicio http://www3.unileon.es/rec/calidad/espacioeuropeo/ http://www.udl.cat/udl/eees.html http://www.uma.es/ordenac/index.html http://www.umh.es/eees/ http://www.um.es/infosecundaria/titulaciones/marco/index.html http://www.unav.es/innovacioneducativa/ http://www.uoc.edu/prensa/reportaje/eees.html http://www.uniovi.es/EEES/ http://www.upo.es/general/estudiar/espacio_europeo/index_espacio.html http://www.upc.edu/eees/ http://www.upm.es/estudios/eduSup/ http://www.upv.es/vece/central_informacion.htm http://www.upcomillas.es/innovacioneducativa/ ? http://csie.unavarra.es/3_formazioa/es/f_conferencias.htm http://www.urjc.es/z_files/aa_infor/aa12_eees.html http://www.ice.urv.es/eees/

U. de Salamanca U. de Santiago de Compostela U. de Sevilla U.N.E.D U. San Pablo C.E.U U. de Valladolid U. de Valncia U. de Vigo U. de Zaragoza

http://www.usal.es/gabinete/comunicacion/espacio_europeo.htm http://www.usc.es/eees/ http://www.us.es/include/frameador2.php?url=/eees http://www.uned.es/catedraunesco-ead/espacio_europeo.html http://www.uch.ceu.es/principal/calidad/inicio.asp?c=convergencia&menusuperior= http://www.uch.ceu.es/principal/calidad/inicio.asp?c=convergencia&menusuperior= http://www.uv.es/oce/web%20castellano/index.htm http://www.uvigo.es/ceees/ http://www.unizar.es/eees/