Unit 1.

Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 1

Last updated 6/10/2021

Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies

Table of contents
Brainstorming ............................................................................................................................ 2
Aims and learning results .......................................................................................................... 2
Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 2
Contents .................................................................................................................................... 2
Part I. Information literacy ..................................................................................................... 2
Databases & Bibliographic Platforms ................................................................................ 4
Generic bibliographic databases ..................................................................................... 13
Open online resources .................................................................................................... 20

Part II. Web syndication as a research tool ................................................................ 30

To sum up… ............................................................................................................................ 32
Final questions ........................................................................................................................ 32
Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 33
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 2

Brainstorming

Answer and discuss the following questions in the forum created for unit 1. There is a thread
opened with this aim.

 Do you know what a database is?

 Have you ever used a database to search for any sort of information?
 Have you ever read an article in its electronic version?
 Do you know what RSS is?

Aims and learning results

This unit focuses on explaining how to plan well-documented research with the help of technology.
By the end of this chapter you will have learnt:
• How to search for the information that you need and where to find it
• How to handle the databases that you need
• How to find the exact location of an e-article
• How to keep your own research findings and get alerts of related news

Introduction

As mentioned in the general introduction, this first part of the course focuses on the first digital
competence that includes the Digital Competence Framework for Citizens, published in 2017 by
the UE: http://tinyurl.com/y7pd77aa (p. 23). This competence implies being able to search,
evaluate and manage information depending on our needs -in this case in the field of English
Studies. This chapter will deal with the first two actions, and the third will be studied in the next
unit. This competence will be crucial to face the first part of your TFG. You will learn how to locate
the information you need from reliable resources which are relevant to your field of study.

Contents

Nowadays all sorts of new tools for gathering resources can be found in university libraries. We
will look at each of them independently so that you can get a clearer idea of what each tool can
offer and how we can get the best of it for our aims. We will show different databases related to
our area of knowledge, ranging from the more specific to the general ones, so that you get to
know how to search for information effectively. One of the first tasks that any researcher has to
do is to check a database or an electronic journal provider.

Part I. Information literacy

The concept of Information Literacy has received different definitions, mainly conditioned by the
technological context of the moment. If we compare the way of conducting research nowadays
with the methods used twenty years ago, we will understand the role that technology and
digitalisation have had in the past few years. The American Library Association (ALA) defined in
1989 IL (Information Literacy) as a skill or an ability to “recognize when information is needed and
have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information”. A few decades
after the same concept is described as “the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 3

discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the
use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of
learning”. The last definition includes two key elements which must be present in the head of all
researchers and academics: "ethics" and "communities". Ethics to mention the source of our
findings (e.g. essays), and "communities", conceived as spaces to share and enrich our
knowledge (Løkse et al., 2017).

Activity 1.1 Getting to know our Library

Log in to campus UNED and visit our library. Think about your favourite subject and try to do a
search related to it. Consider to look up some database first, and then narrow your search to a
journal, book (paper or e-book), report, or any other type of source. Have a look at some of the
links related to your studies (TFG, Plagiarism, Canal Biblioteca, etc.)

When accessing the catalogue, you will see that there are different library locations at UNED
(Sede Central). These are:
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 4

1. Humanidades Senda del Rey /Obispo Trejo (Humanidades, Ciencias, Derecho,

Económicas, etc. ),
2. Juan del Rosal (Educación, / Escuelas de Ingeniería).
3. Juan del Rosal (Psicología)

Although all of them share the same e-resources, each building keeps its own paper
books related to the degrees they coordinate, as well as other topics of interest. If you visit some
of these buildings with your own computer, do not forget to access the internet via Eduroam, a
special configuration that you need to prepare on your computer using your Campus UNED
password. If you are accessing the e-resources from the campus (or any other computer
connected from your local centre) you will have full access to the subscribed materials directly. If
you are accessing from home or outside the campus, you will need to login first at Campus UNED
and use the links created for that aim.

Remember that our library holds several training courses all through the year and most of them
can be followed live on the Internet. Visit the library website for more information.

After that, write about your experience in the forum for unit 1. Was it difficult to find things there?
Did you miss anything?

Databases & Bibliographic Platforms

In the same way the concept of Information Literacy has experienced some variations with the
evolution of technology, the meaning of bibliographic database has changed as well. We have
selected a definition found in the Wikipedia:

A bibliographic database is a database of bibliographic records, an organised digital

collection of references to published literature, including journals and newspaper articles,
conference proceedings, reports, government and legal publications, patents, books, etc.

If at the very beginning these databases provided only information about bibliographic references,
nowadays they have been integrated with journal providers and other bibliographic platforms so
that you can have direct access to the full-text source that you need to consult (e-journal, thesis,
e-book, etc.). In this way, you can visualise an article through two or even three platforms bought
by your library. These platforms can serve as databases as well, and on many occasions it is
difficult to draw a border between the former and the latter. If you perform a search in MLA
(Modern Language Association) International Bibliography or a library catalogue, they will show
different content providers depending on the ones subscribed by your institution.

What it is important to know is that if you want to read an electronic article, your University/
Institution needs to be subscribed at that time including the date when it was published; otherwise,
you will have to try luck with another library. Sometimes you may find "embargo" years, that
means you cannot read articles published in that period of time. Everything depends on the
contract and conditions signed by the library or institution. Most UNED subscribed services are
possible thanks to an agreement called Consorcio Madroño, signed by most public universities
located in Madrid (except for UCM, Universidad Complutense de Madrid).

As you can see below, there are some databases which can be accessed through "Consorcio
Madroño" by all its members, but other which can only be accessed by some Universities (second
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 5

group of resources). Depending on the field, you can find journals of interest in the field of English
Studies in some of the databases shown below (i.e. MLA, JSTOR, Isi Web of Knowledge, etc. ).

Figure 1 Image taken from https://www.consorciomadrono.es/en/recursos-electronicos/

 MLA (Modern Languages Association) publications

MLA is an association of professionals related to the field of languages and humanistic

disciplines founded in 1883 to promote the teaching of English Studies all around the world.
You can read more about this on this link: https://www.mla.org/About-Us/About-the-
MLA/The-MLA-s-Mission. MLA is especially known thanks to its two databases:

MLA International Bibliography, which includes Linguistics, Literature, Culture and

Cinema bibliographic references (books and articles). In the case of UNED, it is provided
by ProQuest. If we type the word "Shakespeare", the engine will retrieve almost 50.000
results, which means that we need to sharpen more our search, filtering by the sort of
work (book, journal, proceeding, etc.), year of publication or language. Note that if your
institution is not subscribed to one of the results, like in the first case, no "full-text" link will
appear. This means that you cannot read the whole article, but only the abstract. Visit
this link to access: http://tinyurl.com/y6rth6fy (you must be logged in Campus UNED).
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 6

MLA Directory of Periodicals, which is a directory with information about the journals
which are indexed in the bibliography. This is more relevant for academics wishing to get
some information about a journal related to this field (language, subscription, frequency,
editors, website, etc.). Being included in this list represents some evidence of "quality". You
can access from a link on the previous page or typing this URL: http://tinyurl.com/y22rlyb5 .
As you can see, there are RSS icons to receive apdating alerts of all the publications. Once
there, you can locate publications searching by the title of by subject:
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 7

Apart from being famous for its databases, MLA is also a book of academic style, one of
the most widely used in English Literature. Others like APA are preferred when dealing
with topics related to education and social sciences
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa6_style/apa_formatting_and_style
_guide/general_format.html

 ERIC (Education Resources Information Center). It is the most important database

dealing with Education. It can be reached freely by an independent researcher using his/her
own account. However, many institutions like UNED access through the EBSCO or
ProQuest platforms. It can also be considered as a repository because you can find several
publications in full-text view. You can even submit your own publications as a registered
user. As you can see below, you can filter per year, descriptor, education level, etc.
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 8

 J-STOR. Apart from providing contents from several e-books and journals related to
Language Studies, among other topics, you will find primary resources (digitalised
manuscripts of historical documents. Also, there is a new tool called "text analyser" which
consists in scanning an article to find other articles of interest related to the text itself. The
image below shows one of the digitalised documents. Its reference can be easily saved,
but the possibility to read all the pages is restricted to individual subscriptions.
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 9

 Literature Online (LION)

It has a collection of full-text works in English dating from the Anglo-Saxon period to the present,
including words from the American Literature and others. In order to have full access you need to
be logged in at Campus UNED. It was first launched in 1996, and more than 20 years later, it is
a reference in its field thanks to the quantity and the quality of its contents. You will reach this
resource from this link http://literature.proquest.com.ezproxy.uned.es/. You may find this other
screen if you access fro the databases listed in the library. In that case, you will have to choose
either the second or the third option if you are outside UNED.

Observe that this is one of the databases provided by ProQuest. You can also select and perform
searches in the data bases at the same time by clicking on “databases”.
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 10

As you will see when you try, you will be able to find information about the writers or audiovisual
resources among other features.
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 11

Activity 1. 2 Working with LION

Perform a basic search of any author included in the contents of the Literature subjects from this
degree. What sort of sources and documents have you found? Do you think this is a useful tool?
Share your experience in the forum.

Other databases not subscribed by UNED

Linguistics Collection (Full coverage of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and

semantics and more).

Apart from articles and other electronic resources, you can find full-text dissertations which cover
the areas mentioned before. This database can be accessed from the University of Granada
library vía ProQuest.

You can find more information here http://media2.proquest.com/documents/linguistics-

collection.pdf

Linguistics Abstracts Online

It is a database of linguistics abstracts containing more than 72000 abstracts extracted from more
than 600 specialised journals. If you need to use it, you can access from Universitat de Barcelona
or Granada.

Although UNED is not subscribed to this resource, it has acquired a similar one named Oxford
Bibliographies, where you will find commented bibliographies related to very specific topics
included in the field of Linguistics. You can see how it works in this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1myXLJZGPwM:

America: History and Life

 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 12

This database belongs to EBSCO and provides access to the following list of journals related to
the history of the United States of America from 1955 to the present. A total of 1800 titles are
shown in the lists that can be seen in the following link: http://www.ebscohost.com/titleLists/31h-
coverage.pdf

Thanks to a database like this, you can have access to digitalised images of ancient texts from
your own institution with the possibility to zoom images, print some pages, read any work in detail,
etc. Unfortunately, UNED is not subscribed, but you can try for free with the demo announced on
its website or locating a subscribed institution. There is a similar one but including previous years,
which is subscribed by our university: European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750 (EBSCO).
It can be accessed through this link: https://tinyurl.com/yxq8cdnm

 Early English books online (EEBO)

It contains digital facsimile page images of most of the works printed in England, Ireland, Scotland,
Wales and British North America, as well as works in English from 1473-1700. It has access to
full-text documents in different disciplines: Fine Arts, English Literature, Linguistics or History. It
can be consulted through ProQuest in some institutions. This links offers some extra information
about this database https://proquest.libguides.com/eebopqp.
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 13

Generic bibliographic databases

 Dialnet (UNED)

It is a Spanish database developed by the University of La Rioja. It has already reached more
than 2.000.000 users and it has become one of the main references for most of the researchers
and professors working in Spanish universities. The access to some full-text versions of the
entries depends on the involvement of your institution, having the possibility to borrow a document
from other institution if it is required. The following screenshot shows a list of journals included in
Dialnet with full-text links (only if you are logged in with an institution subscribed to the
journal/article that you are searching). This service is known as Dialnet Plus. Most of the
publications linked here are based in Spain, which means that most of them will be written in
Spanish except for some edited by associations directly related to English Studies.

The image below shows some English Studies publications included at Dialnet database. Those
marked with UNED on their right have the full texts available through our library.
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 14

If you want to subscribe to some of these journals, you need to sign up before, and once
logged in, click on "Revistas", selecting your topic/s and choose those of you interest:

Once you select the journals, do not expect any sort of confirmation. Just click on
"subscriptions" to check that you got subscribed succesully to the selected journals.

Activity 1.3 Working with Dialnet

Create an account with Dialnet (https://dialnet.unirioja.es/) and subscribe to 3 publications

related to a topic of your interest. Try to read some full-text articles and share your
experience in the forum. Does it have a friendly interface? Was it easy to find authors or
articles?

 Other generic databases

Apart from the databases above, you can find articles related to English Studies in Science
Direct 1, one of the leading bibliographic platforms which has recently acquired others such as
Elsevier 2 (focused on Science and Health publications) or Scopus (recently subscribed by the
UNED library 3). Apart from having more than 2,500 journals and 11,000 books, they have

1
https://www2.uned.es/biblioteca/basesdedatos/sciencedirect.html
2
https://www2.uned.es/biblioteca/basesdedatos/sciencedirect.html
3
https://www2.uned.es/biblioteca/basesdedatos/scopus.html
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 15

devoted a great effort to digitalise many articles written before 1995. Among other functionalities,
it allows you to obtain a list with the 25 most cited references in any of the subscribed journals.
This list shows the results retrieved for "Discourse".

As it is shown above, you can download different articles at the same time, export them to different
bibliographic formats or apply a filter to sharpen your search.

EBSCO

EBSCO, the other world's leading information and publishing company along with Science Direct,
will lead you to many other databases such as European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750,
Teacher Reference Center or even e-books like EBSCO eClassics Collection among others. This
is the appearance of one of the results retrieved when searching something about Information
Literacy in a database called Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts. Take into
account that in this case, there will be no full-text versions, only the abstract is available. Once
you have that information, you will need to look for the whole article in the library catalogue or
Linceo (it will be explained further on).
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 16

As seen above, there is a menu on your right where you can see all the actions you can take with
the selected bibliographic reference (download to your Google Drive, save in a folder, print or
even share it).

REBIUN

Databases like the ones described before must be purchased by our institutions to facilitate the
research study of their undergraduates and postgraduates. Finding all of them in the same
university is unusual. That is why, in the past, you needed to travel to another location to look for
the desired database or paper books, when you were writing your PhD or enrolled in some master
programme. Nowadays there are easier solutions to cover these needs, for example, borrowing
books from other university libraries if they are in paper format.

REBIUN http://www.rebiun.org/Paginas/Inicio.aspx is a collective catalogue comprised by most

Spanish University Libraries where you can find the exact location of a resource. The image below
shows the location of a database which cannot be found at UNED, Linguistics Abstracts Online.
It says that you can access it from the Universities of Coruña and Seville.
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 17

 ExLibris, the new UNED Library platform

During the academic year 2019-20, Consorcio Madroño, and with it, all the libraries included,
migrated from Linceo + (Summon technology) to ExLibris 4, a ProQuest tool used by many other
universities to manage their library catalogues. In order to use it, type what you are looking for
in the search space.

You will be required to identify yourself even if you have done it before proceeding.

4
https://www.exlibrisgroup.com/
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 18

Once there, you will be able to filter your selection (there are more options apart from the ones
shown in this screenshot). You can narrow your search to a range of years, authors, disciplines,
etc.

If you select some of the retrieved results, you will get detailed information about the item:

- the pin means that you have saved that reference,

- the attachment symbol with the "full-text available" indication means that you can read the whole
article. Sometimes you will obtain it automatically with just a click (like in this case), but other
times you will need to look for the volume, issue, etc. The database that contains this article is an
open journal platform, so that If can be accessed from anywhere withing the need to be
subscribed.
- the "sent to" section converts the reference into different formats to be managed by specialised
software (e.g. Mendeley or RefWorks), but we will deepen into this topic in the Unit 2.
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 19

- the "citation" option allows you to obtain the citation of the reference In different styles:

to include some of these citations in your work, simply copy and paste the desired syle into you
paper.
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 20

You can also "pin" more than one reference to export them to your database, but that will be seen
in Unit 2 as well.

Activity 1.4 Getting to know the UNED catalogue (ExLibris Platform)

Use some of the e-resources mentioned in this section and try to access them by using ExLibris.
Make sure you have previously logged in with your Campus UNED account. Try to do the same
with Madroño Primo Catalogue: http://www.consorciomadrono.es/en/servicios/catalogo-
colectivo/ Take into account that some online resources are accessible from our university.
Remember that you can share your doubts and experience in the forum thread created for this
activity in the online course.

Open online resources

 Google Scholar

Together with Linceo, Google Scholar is probably one of the most useful used search engines in
the academic world. Each result will add links to different catalogues and different ways to keep
the reference if you have set it up previously. Additionally, you can create alerts to receive
notifications when there are new publications related to your "keywords". You can also follow the
publications of some authors from your profile.

Once in "settings", you can add some access links to your library/Institution. This way,
anytime you perform a search from Google Scholar, you will know if you can get it from
your library in its full-text version or not. Bear in mind that if the entry is a "citation", you
will not find the primary source with a simple click.
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 21

 Google Books

Although you cannot read the whole book if you do not purchase it, the sample view can help
you get an idea of the contents inside and, in some cases a few pages will be enough. You can
order them using your own shelves and create a wish-list to buy them If you need them. The
image below shows some books ordered by shelves.

 E-journals

Each library has its own collection of e-journals depending on the packs that have been
bought from the main journal retailers. The following images show how to access the e-
journals subscribed by the library. Consider that it is possible that you need to visit the library
onsite, if these journals are published only in their paper version.
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 22

Imagine that we perform a search on "Language" and you retrieve the following results:
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 23

The title of the journal appears in the first place, then we find the years subscribed by the
library, and the journal provider /database to locate the full-text version. See how, in some
cases, such as the fourth example, you can find the journal in different providers, with different
periods of time subscribed. Open Access Journal means that all the journals contained
provide free access to the complete text of each article.

The following screenshot shows one of the journals mentioned before. Once you are on its
platform, you will be able to access the full-text version thanks to the subscription of the library
(green colour) or to the open policy of some numbers (orange). This varies from one platform
to another. Look at the orange icons (they will be described later). The menu on the right
shows the volumes, Issues and year of publication. These elements will be useful when
looking for your references and citing them later.

Although most of the e-journals subscribed by UNED can be found through the library
website, there might be variations depending on the embargos, updating, etc. This is the
reason why we recommend looking for the journal on the meta-searcher, and then try if you
can access the full text or not. The most important collections are Wiley Online, Academic
Search Premier, Ingenta, Sweetswise, Springerlink, Taylor & Francis, Sage Journals, Oxford
Journals, Cambridge University Press, etc. You do not need to learn by heart which journal
belongs to each collection, but getting familiar with their interfaces will help you extract their
information quickly.

Each of the bibliographic references displayed by these electronic resources shares very
similar options: printing, saving references following different standards, sending through
email or exporting to some bibliographic formats among many other functions.

 E-books

In the same way as most academic journals are becoming digital, the number of ebooks as an
alternative to the traditional paper books is increasing too. These are some of the most useful
e-book platforms which may be of interest for the English Studies disciplines:
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 24

- Ebook central (ebrary before) http://tinyurl.com/y8fsvfwe . It is a platform owned by ProQuest

which, apart from containing books edited by the UNED- some of them basic textbooks-,
includes an extensive collection of work from different areas. Creating an account is compulsory
for reading books, but you will also be able to create shelves, take notes, add favourites,
highlight, etc.

- O’Reilly Safari Books Online gives you “access to our 35K+ books, 30K+ hours of video,
curated learning paths, case studies, interactive tutorials, audiobooks, and O'Reilly conference
videos”. It is a good place to find handbooks to learn how to use different applications, all of them
extremely new. You need to access from our library link and enter your UNED email account at
the very beginning. As seen below, you can create your own playlists of content, highlight, and
share resources with other colleagues. You can also find multimedia contents:
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 25

If you want to know more about Office 365, you can follow this playlist:
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/microsoft-office-365/9781509307791/

- Elsevier / Science Direct. Apart from being one of the most widely used journal
providers, you can find some specialised ebooks. Some of them are a compilation of chapters
written by different authors, which are very similar to articles. Their references are very easy
to export to different formats. We will learn how to do this in the next unit.

Figure 2 Example taken from http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.uned.es/science/book/9780081001707

 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 26

E-BUNED is another platform to read ebooks based on xebook 5 technology, which is

being used by many public libraries in Spain. Although you need to borrow this book from
the library for a limited time, you can skim the book using "hojear"

Click here to read

 Open Access Libraries

Gutenberg Project 6

It is a very well-known project that has been compiling classic books in English to spread
literature and the love for literature in general on the Internet. Now there are versions in other
languages such as French, Portuguese and Dutch. It has more than 60.000 ebooks ready to
read. It is very useful to locate the first editions of classic books. As you can see in the image
below, the same text can be read in different formats, included those to be read in ebook
devices.

5
http://xercode.es/2012/06/18/xebook-citado-en-la-mesa-redonda-los-desafios-de-los-profesionales-
frente-al-libro-digital/
6
http://www.gutenberg.org/
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 27

Open Library 7 is a library open to the whole world of the Internet in the form of a wiki. Everybody
is invited to share books, either uploading them entirely by scanning all their pages or only by
offering to lend the book to any other person that may need it.

After reading this, you may wonder what the difference between Guttenberg Project and Open
Library is. This quotation gives us the answer to this question:

Project Gutenberg is a place to download and read thousands of free ebooks. Open
Library's goal is to list every book -- whether in-print or out-of-print, available at a bookstore or a
library, scanned or typed in as text. In other words, we provide access to all of Project
Gutenberg's books but we have hundreds of thousands of others as well.

7
https://openlibrary.org/
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 28

Europeana
It is an open online library which comprises not only books but also multimedia files such as
videos, audios or artworks produced in different European nationalities. It can be useful if you
need to find cultural and historical documents for your TFG or even in your future research.

Once logged in, you can find a very interesting project of digitalisation, consisting of transcribing
already scanned documents for easy retrieval later on 8. A great amount of digitalised
manuscripts can also be found http://tinyurl.com/yd9bwjm5 . Each image can be magnified so
that you can perceive some details.

8
https://transcribathon.com/en/
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 29

Luminarium 9

It is one of the pioneer "digital libraries" specialised in English Studies on the Internet. It comprises
a complete anthology of English Literature from the Middle Ages to the Restoration period. It is
based on a very detailed set of links for each author. Apart from full-texts, author bibliographies
and some essays, you can also find a project called Encyclopaedia, created "to provide historical
contexts for the people, places, and events featured in Luminarium."

9
http://www.luminarium.org/
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 30

Activity 1.5 Learning about other libraries and databases

Visit some other University libraries and look for the electronic sources that they offer to their
users. Try to access other databases that may be of interest for you, which are not available at
UNED. Some examples are:
http://biblioteca.ugr.es/pages/biblioteca_electronica/index (Universidad de Granada)
https://www.open.ac.uk/library/library-resources (Open University)
https://bib.us.es/ (Universidad de Sevilla)
https://www.uab.cat/web/libraries-1345738247610.html (Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona)
https://www.lboro.ac.uk/library/ (Loughborough University)

You can also visit a library near the place where you live. Remember that you can use any of the
public libraries to check e-documents (if the institution is paying for it). Consider even the
possibility of bringing your own computer to the library to download articles or transfer them to a
memory stick.
All you have to do is look for "full-text" articles and click "download" to save them in your memory
drive.

Part II. Web syndication as a research tool

You may have seen a little orange icon in many web pages and you may wonder what it is for. If
you haven't noticed it yet, try to locate the following image next time you visit newspapers or blogs
online. This Is an example:
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/index.html
.
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 31

Web syndication is a form of syndication [arrangement] in which website material is made

available to multiple other sites. Most commonly, web syndication refers to making web feeds
available from a site in order to provide other people with a summary or update of the website's
recently added content (for example, the latest news or forum posts). The term can also be used
to describe other kinds of licensing website content so that other websites can use it. (Wikipedia,
English Version).

This video will help you understand better the concept of RSS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU. You can read more about it with books from
Safari Online (Sabin-Wilson & Mullenweg, 2014), although, it is important to know that RSS feeds
are not as widespread as they used to be.

This is done by adding XML code (Extensible Makeable Language) that readers can use. Readers
are alerted automatically thanks to RSS (Really simple Syndication) technique. The following
graphic summarises the running of these kinds of tools:
Page
updating

Web/blog XML

user RSS

To read these updatings, you will need to use a tool called aggregator, although some email
applications such as Thunderbird or Outlook already permit this option. Feedly is an example of
the aggregator to receive this sort of messages. This video shows how to use it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No-3uHejTIs

If you click on the icon, you will generate a URL. If you add the URL generated to a feeds
aggregator, you will receive a message every time something new is published in the journal,
blog, or the magazine you follow.

Activity 1.6 Aggregators & Feeds (Optional)

Create an account with Feedly or any other aggregator. Go through some of the mentioned sites
and try to subscribe some RSS of your interest. You can also try with Dialnet, Gutemberg Project
or the Spanish Ministry of Education. Create your own categories to organise your feeds and try
to visualise them through different viewers. Alternatively, you can use your email application to
receive RSS alerts along with your emails.

Comment your experience in the forum (unit 1).

 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 32

Question bank

This group contains tests to study the contents of the first unit of this course
https://www.goconqr.com/es-ES/groups/38516/show_study_aids You can also create more
tests even from your mobile phone or your tablet. You can apply to join In the link mentioned
before. Please, let me know If you have any doubt with them. Applications might have
experienced some changes and updatings In the last years.

To sum up…

After reading this unit, you may feel overwhelmed with so much information about databases, e-
journals and open libraries to search for information. Do not worry, the important thing is that you
start gettingg familiar with all the resources that we have at our disposal before beginning any
research. You do not have to use them all, but it is good to know that they exist in the case you
need them in the future.

Final questions

- Comment in the forum until what extent you have learnt something useful in this unit.

- Would you use any of the databases and other tools to elaborate your TFG? Which of them?
 Unit 1. Databases and electronic libraries for English Studies 33

Bibliography

Cohen, S. M. (2004). RSS. Computers in libraries: Complete coverage of library information

technology, (2)

Croft, W. B., Metzler, D., & Strohman, T. (2010). Search engines: Information retrieval in
practice (International ed.). Boston: Addison-Wesley.

Dunning, Ted ; Friedman, E. (Ed.). (2014). Time Series Databases: New Ways to Store and
Access Data: ProQuest Tech Books. Sebastopol, USA: O’Reilly Media.

Manning, C. D., Raghavan, P., & Schütze, H. (2008). Introduction to information retrieval.
New York: Cambridge University Press.

Løkse, M., Låg, T., Solberg, M., Andreassen, H. N., & Stenersen, M. (2017). Teaching
information literacy in higher education : effective teaching and active learning.
Cambridge (USA).

Ruthve, I., & Kelly, D. (2011). Interactive information seeking behavior and retrieval, 296.

You will find more updated bibliography in the virtual course. This year we will use Mendeley
to keep our bibliography up-to-date.

For a more accurate list of bibliographic reference, visit or Mendeley group, Unit 1 at
https://www.mendeley.com/library/
 Unit 2. Bibliographic management applications 1

Last updated 21/10/2021

Unit 2. Bibliographic management applications

Table of contents

Brainstorming ............................................................................................................................ 2
Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 2
Concept of Bibliographic management applications (BMA) ...................................................... 2
Main elements of a BMA ........................................................................................................... 2
1. Adding new references to your BMA ............................................................................. 3
2. Managing data ............................................................................................................... 3
3. Generating bibliographic references automatically ....................................................... 4
BMA Typology ........................................................................................................................... 4
Commercial BMAs ................................................................................................................. 5
Open source BMAs ............................................................................................................. 13
Conclusions ............................................................................................................................. 14
Final open questions ............................................................................................................... 14
Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 15
 Unit 2. Bibliographic management applications 2

Brainstorming

Answer and discuss the following questions in the forum dedicated to unit 2. There will be a
thread devoted to this topic.

 When you need to add additional references or cited works to an assignment, how do
you do it?
 Do you copy and paste the bibliographic reference from the article /database to your
essay or use any other method?
 Have you ever used any ICT tool to keep your selected bibliography?
 Do you know the existence of tools to help you manage your bibliographic references?

Introduction

The contents covered in this unit are related to the competence area entitled "Information
and data literacy", and more specifically competence 1.3. Managing data, information and digital
content (Carretero, Vuorikari & Punie, 2017). This competence is crucial to be able to easily locate
information previously saved. In this unit we will focus on the bibliographic references as such, in
opposition to unit 4, focused on managing data retrieved from research processes.

We live in the Digital Age, and thousands of publications are being written every day
about every single topic. Being up to date is becoming more and more difficult and we may feel
overwhelmed at times. This is one of the reasons why new tools began to arise some years ago
to help collect and manage bibliographic references. If the first applications were thought to
be used by trained personnel from libraries and documentation services, the new versions are
being optimised to be used in different platforms and devices. Some of them add the possibility
to work in a group to share and create bibliographic databases collaboratively.

Concept of Bibliographic management applications (BMA)

Also known as Reference Managing Software (RMS) they are those tools that allow
creating, organising and managing bibliographic references so that they can be easily
retrieved in later searches. Additionally, they allow creating lists of bibliographic references
presented attending to different standards.

Main elements of a BMA

Although some of the functions commented here will be hard to understand before
knowing how to use these applications, having a general idea of their options is a useful starting
point. As you can see in the diagram below, each of the elements shown here corresponds to
the basic aims of the BMAs: adding new data or references, managing new data and generating
bibliography.
 Unit 2. Bibliographic management applications 3

Adding new data

1 •From Databases, e-journals, RSS, ISBN, RIS files, etc.

Managing data
2 •Creating folders, adding tags, commenting entries, searching
data, etc.

Generating bibliography
3 •Directly from the private database, using the embedded cites in a
text document, etc.

1. Adding new references to your BMA

Once we start using a BMA (to be explained in detail in the following sections), we will be able
to import new references in four different ways:

1) Manually, by typing one by one all the fields of the bibliographic reference.
2) Directly, by transferring the citation reference to your BMA from the source with just a
click. This can be done through a complement or extension downloaded and installed
in your browser.
3) Indirectly, saving the citation information in a file before being imported, using formats
such as TXT, XML, RIS format or BibTeX etc. Each tool works better with some of these
extensions or even has its own standard. Make sure you know this information before
importing references to your BMA. These extensions can also be used to migrate
references from one tool to another.
4) Other methods: accessing directly from your BMA to external library catalogues, RSS,
etc. (e.g. RefWorks) or extracting bibliographic information from a PDF file.

2. Managing data

The references that you add to your BMA can be easily classified by adding tags
(keywords), putting them in the right folders, or even adding notes and commentaries to the new
entry or body of the article (e.g. Mendeley). Also, you can set up your application to save your
references in a specific standard by default (e. MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.). Keeping a minimum
order from the beginning is vital if we want to get the best out of these applications, not only
thinking in our interest but also if we want to share our references with someone else.
 Unit 2. Bibliographic management applications 4

3. Generating bibliographic references automatically

One of most gratifying functions of these applications is the possibility to create

bibliographies in a different style with a mouse click. Normally, these tools already include a
list of the most common citation systems which are automatically updated when a new version
appears. Additionally, you can adapt those already included to other aims and add your own
styles to follow some special guideline required by a journal. Once the list has been generated, a
final revision by the author is recommended, to be able to correct some possible errors in the final
output.

Generating bibliographic references directly from the application

If the application allows is, this method is the easiest way to obtain a quick list from a
single folder or selecting the citations that you need one by one. As mentioned before, they use
the provided standards by default, and even some of them allow adding your own ones or even
modifying some of their elements. We will have the chance to learn how to do this with RefWorks
later in this unit.

Generating bibliographic references using a Word Processor

Although the later versions of Word Processors like Microsoft Word already include this
function by default, some MBAs offer the possibility to download and add a macro to your Word
Processor so that you can access to your references every time you need it. This way, you will
be able to insert cites while drafting your document, so that you fully concentrate on the matter of
your work without being distracted with this formatting Issues. You need to open the "Revise"
section to see these options:

Once you have completed the document, you can obtain that whole list of cited references,
in alphabetical order, with just one click. Each macro works differently so you will have to practise
and learn how to use it. We will learn how to do this later.

BMA Typology

Now that we have a clearer idea of the potential of these tools, we will concentrate on two
of them to learn how to use them. Initially, some authors divided these applications into three
types: classics, web-based and social networks aimed; but some years later, they were
reduced to two modalities: open source and commercial software. Nowadays, most of them have
a web-based version and allow to share references easily. We will focus first on the commercial
ones, because these are the pioneers, to move finally to the open-source BMAs, which are more
varied and accessible because you do not have to pay.
 Unit 2. Bibliographic management applications 5

Commercial BMAs

Nowadays, there are several BMAs: EndNote (one of the pioneers in this field), RefWorks,
and Mendeley. We are going to focus on the two last ones, mainly.

EndNote (mixed)

Developed by Thomson Reuters, it is one leading BMAs nowadays. Along with its Version X9,
which can be tried for free for 30 days, this is a basic free version, completely online. This chart
http://tinyurl.com/y47f9t23 compares the functions included in the full one, being some of them
included in the basic version.

RefWorks

It is one of the BMAs most widely used by researchers and academics, along with
EndNote. It has been receiving a rapid increase of users since its foundation in 2001. One of its
advantages is that it permits the direct exportation of several references at the same time from
several databases and online resources. This can be due to the fact that a product developed by
ProQuest Research Solutions Team, being this company the provider of many products by
Consorcio Madroño. Although it launched a new version two years ago, Flow, it has not been
available at UNED until 2019. This version presents a friendlier interface, although some of the
legacy edition functions have been replaced by others.

The image below shows the most important elements of RefWorks as seen in "Normal
view". You can change this view to others like "table view", "Full view" or "Citation view" to check
that there are no missing fields or typos. The main features have been marked with a number:

1. References. Pay attention to the name of the author, the title and source. If the name
of the author is written all in capital letters, you must change it. You can do so by clicking on the
entry, which will then be highlighted in blue and will show on the right-hand side all the fields to
complete or modify. Each reference can appear in two folders at the same time. Observe how
each reference has a unique number (ID). Make sure you do not have the same title with two a
different IDs; this will mean that you have duplicated references in your database. Most BMAs
can detect these references automatically so that you do not have repeated entries. You can also
add tags (keywords) to the references so that it is easier to locate them later. Some of them are
already included when the reference Is imported.

2. Folders. They are located on the left-hand side of the entries. The number in
parenthesis shows how many references are contained in each folder. If you click on the three
dots on the right of the folder, you will be able to edit it, share it or adding sub-folders. One of the
most relevant features of RefWorks (not included in others) is that you can create a bibliography
out of a folder just with a click. You can also copy and paste isolated references to any document,
already with the format required.
 Unit 2. Bibliographic management applications 6

RefWorks offers the possibility to install an extension to grab web references, or to insert
in-text cites in your Microsoft Word document while writing. You will need to install an extension
to Microsoft Word. This is the way it looks, once installed in your Word Processor.

One of the strongest points of RefWorks is the possibility of adding long lists of references
from databases such as ExLibris or Dialnet. All you have to do is to select all the references you
need and send them to your RefWorks account with the direct export option provided by the site.
The image shows how to select items. Then, you will need to click on the pin to move to the next
step.
 Unit 2. Bibliographic management applications 7

Remember to select the new version of RW:

 Unit 2. Bibliographic management applications 8

Once there, they will be saved in the last imported folder, so that you will have to move them later
to your desired fold.

Activity 2.1. Managing your RefWorks database

Open an account with RefWorks https://refworks.proquest.com/library/all/.

Create two or three folders for some of your topics of interest.

Add some references to the folders created using the UNED catalogue or Dialnet using the direct
exportation. Remember that you need to be registered with Dialnet to be able to select and export references
to your RefWorks folders.

You will find more information about how to manage your bibliography with RefWorks Here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzmTj_AGeY59VoNv-0SvcCg

Mendeley (mixed)

Mendeley's website defines it as "a free reference manager and academic social network
that can help you organise your research, collaborate with others online, and discover the latest
research". Its commercial version is the "Mendeley Institutional Edition", with Premium features
such as the possibility to create private groups with 100 members instead of 3. You can find out
more about Mendeley here https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/mendeley.

If RefWorks is one of the best BMA to import several references at the same time and convert
them into lists of references with a mouse click, one of the strongest points of Mendeley is its
collaboration potential and the possibilities to comment on the body of the article (pdf version). It
is flexible, accessible from different platforms and devices and shows a fresh, friendly interface.

These are some of the main features of Mendeley:

 Unit 2. Bibliographic management applications 9

• Web Importer

Thanks to this browser extension you can incorporate different types of resources to your
database (books, websites, reports, articles, etc.). Observe that you can add the selected
resource directly into a specific group/s and folder/s at a time (1). Before saving your record, you
can edit the fields of the captured reference or even complete the information with more specific
data (2).

You can download this extension from the web and add it the different browsers:
https://www.mendeley.com/reference-management/web-importer#id_1

• Adding references

Although you can do this from the web-based site, using the desktop version is easier. Do not
forget to synchronise your database after all to see your changes in the Web Importer. All your
insertions can be done to your library (only you can find your references), or to a particular group
/folder.

Apart from adding references manually (1), there are other methods to incorporate new
references to your database, most of them share by other BMAs:

- Indirectly (2), importing files in different bibliographic formats. These are the most common
bibliographic formats used nowadays, as mentioned in at RefWorks help:

Bibliographic Software (EndNote, Reference Manager, ProCite) Saves the database in a tagged format that can import
into another bibliographic management program. It is the format sometimes called the RIS Format or Reference Manager
Format and can be imported into Reference Manager, ProCite, EndNote, or any other program that supports the RIS
Format.

BibTeX – Ref ID Saves the database in the file format for use with the LaTeX document preparation system.

Citation List Creates a list to use when writing your paper offline. The format includes the RefID, Authors Primary, Title
Primary, and Publication Year only.
 Unit 2. Bibliographic management applications 10

RefWorks Tagged Format Saves the database in a format similar to the bibliographic management software format. This
is a tagged format. The data layout, however, is patterned after the RefWorks database as opposed to tags that match
with other bibliographic programs. Use this format for backup purposes and for sharing data with other RefWorks users.

RefWorks XML Format Saves the data in an XML version of the RefWorks Tagged Format.

Tab Delimited Saves all your data in an organized manner with each field separated by a tab. It may then be loaded into
other programs that are designed to read this type of format.

Thanks to the indirect export, we can import several references at the same time in an automatic
way.

- Adding file/s. In pdf format (3). Apart from using the options below, you can also click and drag
the files from the folder on your PC.

3
1

- The direct method, using the Web Importer mainly, described before. Although, on many
occasions, you can also find this option in journals such us Cambridge Journals or Science Direct,
in the same way you find RefWorks icon to export directly.

• Adding in-cites and generating bibliographies

Although there is no way to create bibliographies from the folders contained in your Mendeley
database, there are other options which can help you ease this task as well:

- In the case of single references, copying and pasting using the right button on your mouse /
Formatted citation would be enough:

Once you do that, you will get the reference in you desired output (APA in this case) by pressing
Ctrl+V:

MacMillan, D. (2012). Mendeley: Teaching Scholarly Communication and Collaboration

Through Social Networking. Library Management, 33(8/9), 561-569.
https://doi.org/10.1108/01435121211279902
 Unit 2. Bibliographic management applications 11

- If you need to write a whole article, essay or work, using the Microsoft Word macro would be
the easiest option. To do this, we click on "References" so that we can see the following
buttons. Once there, you can insert cites whenever you need (1) and generate the list of cited
references once you have finished with your text (2) as explained in this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATkcC9609bQ. We will go back to this point in unit 5 when
we focus on academic styles and formatting papers.

This method facilitates your collaborative work in the sense that you can use group
bibliographies to write an essay without much effort.

Migrating bibliographic references from RefWorks to Mendeley

One of the advantages of BMAs is the possibility to migrate references from one tool to another.
To do this, we need to export the saved references to a some of the provided formats in order to
be imported later by the desired BMA.
RIS

XML,

BibTex

Choose one of your RefWorks folders and export it to a bibliographic format (RIS is the best
option) The, save it in your computer and to be retrieved later from Mendeley.
 Unit 2. Bibliographic management applications 12

Once you have located the folder where you would like to Import the references from RefWorks
or you have created a new one, open the desktop application, go to Add Files and choose the
RIS file to import.

After this, observe how all the references from your RefWorks folder are now in your
Mendeley folder as well. It is time now to make your changes, attaching pdfs to comment, etc.
Similar processes must be followed if you need to migrate your references from other MBAs to
others, creating security backups, etc.

Now that you have an idea of how to work with both programs, choosing one or another
is up to you. You can also work with RefWorks to manage great amounts of references and
migrate a specialised selection to Mendeley if you want to annotate them or share them within
the same group.
 Unit 2. Bibliographic management applications 13

Activity 2.2 Managing your references with Mendeley

1. Register at Mendeley

2. Download Mendeley Desktop https://www.mendeley.com/download-desktop/

3. Create a folder at "My Library" called "TFG" (or with any other name).

4. Open a new tag with your RefWorks account, create another folder named TFG and collect
different references from the library related to a topic that you would like to cover in your TFG.

5. Export the references to RIS format and import them from the Mendeley desktop version.

6. Add some references using the Web Importer or adding a PDF and make some notes on the
PDF document.

Remember to share your experience directly in the Mendeley group or in the course forum.

Open source BMAs

Zotero

It is one of the widest spread open-source applications to manage bibliographic

references although its interface has remained the same in the last year, while Mendeley
continues evolving. It shares with Mendeley its aim to be designed to work in collaboration and
importance of its browser extension to retrieve data from the web. A group was created some
time ago to try this tool, but it has not been very successful This is the link, if you want to have a
look: https://www.zotero.org/groups/230232/aplicaciones_tic_en_los_estudios_ingleses). It is
still open, in case you wish to have a look. It also works for Linux and Mac OS and it has a quite
active community https://forums.zotero.org/discussions
 Unit 2. Bibliographic management applications 14

You can find extra functions such as the attachment tool that allows you to obtain
screenshots from websites and add them to the citation, the possibility to have both the web and
application open at the same time, including folders, you own database, etc.

Conclusions

After reading this chapter, you will probably have in your mind a much more complete
idea about these tools, when to use them and how. All of them are very effective tools and will
optimise you’re academic work, although you will need some of time to get to know them and
choose the best option for you.

Final open questions

After reading this unit, reflect on whether you find these tools useful, and if you think that you
will be using them in your research.

- Have you found this unit extremely difficult to follow?

- Do you think you could use any of the tools seen in this unit in your TFG?

- In that case, which one do you prefer?

 Unit 2. Bibliographic management applications 15

Bibliography

Carretero, S., Vuorikari, R., & Punie, Y. (2017). DigComp 2.1. The digital competence framework
for citizens with eight proficiency levels and examples of use. Retrieved from
https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/3c5e7879-308f-11e7-9412-
01aa75ed71a1/language-en

Mendeley: https://www.mendeley.com/library/
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 1

Last updated 08/11/2021

Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice

Table of contents

Brainstorming ............................................................................................................................ 2
Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 2
Communities of Practice (CoPs) and professional forums ....................................................... 3
CoPs for teachers and researchers....................................................................................... 4
Examples of CoP designed for students of foreign languages ............................................. 8
Tools to create CoPs ............................................................................................................... 10
Asynchronous Computer-Mediated Communication tools (ACMC) .................................... 12
Synchronous CMC tools (SCMC) ........................................................................................ 24
Final Questions........................................................................................................................ 29
Conclusions ............................................................................................................................. 29
To know more .......................................................................................................................... 29
Bibliographic references .......................................................................................................... 30
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 2

Brainstorming

Answer the following questions in the forum dedicated to unit 3. There will be a thread
devoted to this topic.

• Do you know what a Community of Practice is?

• Have you ever been part of one of them?
• Do you think it is essential to belong to one of them in order to study a specific topic?
• Have you ever had any bad experience with any of them?

Introduction

We have explored in the previous unit how bibliographic management applications

(BMAs) can help us make the process of gathering and updating our list of references an easier
task. However, we are not alone. Being able to work collaboratively is an extremely important
competence nowadays if we want to improve our work. We have already seen some referencing
tools that can be used collaboratively, but in this unit we will go even further.

Communication is an essential element of our everyday life. Most of the contents of this
unit correspond to the descriptors included in the DigComp 2.1 competence 2.4 Collaborating
through digital technologies, which means “To use digital tools and technologies for
collaborative processes, and for co-construction and co-creation of resources and knowledge”
(Ferrari, 2013).

Below are the different proficiency levels that you can achieve in this competence, according to
(Carretero et al., 2017, p. 26):
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 3

We will begin by revising the concept of Community of Practice (CoP) and some of its
direct applications.

Communities of Practice (CoPs) and professional forums

According to Wenger (1998), one of the pioneers in the study of the Communities
of practice, these are described as groups of people who share a concern or a passion
for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.

Three main elements are inherent to any CoP:

 The domain: A community of practice is not merely a club of friends or a network of

connections among people. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest.
 The community: In pursuing their interest in their domain, members are engaged in everyday
activities and discussions, help each other and share information. They build relationships that
enable them to learn from each other.
 The practice: A community of practice is not merely a community of interest--people who like
certain kinds of movies, for instance. Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They
develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, and ways of addressing
recurring problems— in short, a shared practice.

Communities of Practice are not new at all, and they are not exclusively related
to learning contexts. They have existed for ages with the added value of having become virtual in
the last two decades. They began by using BBS (Bulletin Board System), consisting of sending
messages to an online board to ask questions to other members of the community, share opinions
about a particular topic, etc. The first communities were started by people suffering any illness
that made contact to try to obtain relief to their pains. As time went by, these boards became
distribution lists, and later became more sophisticated forums with tools to upload files, images,
deliver polls, etc., for example, Yahoo Groups. However, they seem to be going out of fashion.
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 4

Some examples of CoPs related to Language Studies

Before exploring some tools to create your own communities, learning about some of
them related to the field of English Studies could be interesting for you. For this reason, we will
begin by describing some of the most relevant ones focused on language teachers and
researchers, and then some others devoted to language learners.

CoPs for teachers and researchers

The Internet has meant a giant step for those who teach and/or research using
technology. Some of these CoPs began with a simple distribution list and have been transformed
into Social Networks with different dedicated elements. They experience pitch and down periods
depending on the issues covered, but the important thing is that their members have a meeting
point whenever they need to share an enquiry, ask any doubt or to find out information in order
to start with some incipient research. As stated before, some of these communities are in fact
professional associations with a presence in different social networks, which are used to publicise
their publications, events, communications, etc.

Webheads.

It is one of the most active CoPs, integrated by more than 1000 language teachers from
all over the world, who search for new ways of teaching through technology. They built their first
CoP with a Yahoo Group but now they have migrated to an alternative site
https://groups.io/g/webheadsinaction. They have a long tradition of organising open virtual
courses online for language teachers on the most relevant and innovative topics all around the
world. This is the case of Electronic Village Online, which started “as a TESOL Special Project of
the CALL Interest Section in 1999 and was founded in 2000 by Christine Bauer-Ramazani, Tom
Robb, and Susan Gaer”. You can subscribe to their newsletter here: http://pbworks.us3.list-
manage.com/subscribe?u=4269e8c899d3893e5ba113427&id=3e3932b2dc.

All of their online events are listed here:

http://evosessions.pbworks.com/w/page/10708564/EVO%20Previous%20Sessions .
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 5

Almost two decades later, Webheads keeps on being one of the most active and
determined CoPs in the world of CALL. Its members acknowledge that their expertise has
increased thanks to the collective knowledge gained in this CoP. It can be considered a perfect
example of CoP. They have a quite respected leader with a reputation that inspires confidence.
All the topics dealt in the community are perfectly reliable, and practice is evident. It is one of the
best places to grow professionally in the art of teaching languages with technology at the same
time it can provide you will students to promote exchanges and innovation programs. You can
also follow the activity of its member through LinkedIn group
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/95403/.

AEDEAN (Spanish Association for English and American Studies)

AEDEAN and AESLA (described below) are the two main Spanish associations related
to Philology. In the same way as AESLA, it organises an annual conference. It also has its own
distribution list, to which you can only subscribe if you are a paying member. This association
covers the following areas:

Comparative Literature, Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Feminist and Gender Studies, Film
Studies, Historical Linguistics, Language Teaching and Acquisition, Lexis, Medieval and
Renaissance Studies, Modern and Contemporary Literature, New Technologies, Phonetics and
Phonology, Postcolonial Studies, Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis, Short Story,
Sociolinguistics & Dialectology, Syntax, Translation Studies & US Studies.

Articles related to these topics can be found in their publication ATLANTIS, Journal of the Spanish
Association for Anglo-American Studies. You can browse the different issues and articles here:
https://www.atlantisjournal.org/index.php?journal=atlantis&page=issue&op=archive.
Additionally, they publish the magazine Nexus twice a year. All its pdf-issues can be read openly
though this link https://aedean.org/?page_id=141

This association is connected to The European Society for the Study of English (ESSE) and The
European Association of American Studies (EAAS). Both associations have their own journals:
The ESSE Messenger European http://essenglish.org/messenger/ and Journal of American
Studies http://ejas.revues.org/ All their articles can be read in their full-text version from the links
provided. Along with AEDEAN, all these associations also publish the proceedings of the
conferences they hold every year (two, in the case of EAAS). Some of them can even offer some
grant for students, it is worth checking it out 1.

AEDEAN has recently opened a Twitter account, @aedeaninfo

1
http://www.eaas.eu/eaas-grants/travel-grants
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 6

AESLA (Asociación Española de Linguística Aplicada)

The distribution list is only for members, and so is their online forum 2, in the same way as
AEDEAN. Their specialized panels cover areas closer to linguistic than cultural or literature
matters, like in the case of AEDEAN. RESLA Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish
Journal of Applied Linguistics (RESLA/SJAL) is the name of its publication, and it can be acceded
through this URL: https://benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/resla/main Its topics coincide with the
specialised panels of the association. You can find more information in Dialnet
https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/revista?codigo=1727

Take note of these profiles so that you can visit them later in this unit:

Twitter: @aesla_twit / Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aeslaweb / LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/AESLA-4450901

TESOL (International Association of English to Speakers of Other Languages)

Although it is based in the United States, this association has members and local delegations
all around the world, for instance, TESOL-Spain http://www.tesol-spain.org/en/. The Interest
sections (ISs) of this associations include: Adult Education; Applied Linguistics; Bilingual
Education; Computer-Assisted Language Learning; Elementary Education; English as a Foreign
Language; English for Specific Purposes; Higher Education; Intercultural Communication;
Intensive English Programs; International Teaching Assistants; Materials Writers; Non-native
English Speakers in TESOL; Program Administration; Refugee Concerns; Second Language
Writing; Secondary Schools; Social Responsibility; Speech, Pronunciation, and Listening;
Teacher Education; Video and Digital Media. These topics are dealt in its publications: TESOL-
Journal 3, TESOL Quarterly 4 and specialised books. Unfortunately, our library is not subscribed to
these publications, but you can follow the activity of this organisation thanks to its RSS
http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/tesolc/rss-intro.php and their presence in several social
networks:

2
http://www.aesla.org.es/es/lista-distribucion
3
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1949-3533/issues
4
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1545-7249
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 7

Twitter: @TESOL_Assn / Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tesol.assn/ LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/tesol-international-association

IATEFL (International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language)

If TESOL International is one of the most representative English Teacher associations in the
United States and other parts of the world, its equivalent in the European continent is IATEFL
(International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language). Its annual conventions
are held annyally in different parts of the UK. Its Special Interest Groups (SIGs) also have their
own events within and outside the general convention. IATEFL active SIGs are: Learner
Autonomy; Learning Technologies; Literature; Pronunciation; Research; Teacher Development;
Testing, Evaluation & Assessment and Young Learner and Teenagers among others. One of the
most actives SIG is LTSIG (Learning Technologies SIG). You can follow its activities through their
website, https://ltsig.iatefl.org/ Twitter: @iatefl_ltsig or Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/LTSIG/?fref=ts (where they have more than 3000 members).

You can learn more about IATEFL on its YouTube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/IATEFLtalks

EuroCALL (European Association of Computer Assisted Language Learning)

EuroCALL (European Association of Computer Assisted Language Learning) is a professional

association dedicated to language learning and teaching with new technologies. It holds an
annual conference in a European country http://eurocall-languages.org/. It also has several SIGs:
Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC); Corpus; Joint Virtual Worlds and Serious Games
(together with CALICO); Mobile Assisted Language Learning; Intelligent CALL; CALL Teacher
Education; Graduate; Language MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses); Less Commonly
Taught Languages.

Social Network Presence: Twitter: @EurocallLang; LinkedIn group:

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/EUROCALL-710067; Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/255577856335/ It also has a distribution list, but it is only for
members.
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 8

RECALL is the name of their main publication, and it can be read in its full-text version from 2001
through the library. They also have a second journal, The EuroCALL Review, which publishes
more hands-on papers: https://polipapers.upv.es/index.php/eurocall/index

CALICO (Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium)

CALICO (Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium) is the CALL association based
in the United States https://calico.org/. Its SIGs include: Computer Mediated Communication;
Gaming; Graduate students; ICALL (Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning); LTLT
(Language Teaching and Learning Technologies); SLAT (Second Language Acquisition and
Technology; Teacher Education and Virtual Worlds. Some of its articles can be read in the full-
text version for free: https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/CALICO/issue/archive

Examples of CoP designed for students of foreign languages

Web 2.0 has been considered an efficient and easy way to use tools to create an
environment where one can exchange impressions and ideas with people from all over the world.
If traditional pen-friends used the discussion to exchange letters in the foreign language, this new
environment has made possible the emergence of several spaces to practice any language freely
and in an easier way. Here you can find some examples:

Busuu (http://www.busuu.com ) is a CoP based on Video Chat to practice foreign

languages. Its name comes from a language in Camerun spoken by just 80 people. The free
version includes Flash cards, writing exercises and correction from native speakers.
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 9

Its mobile apps have been awarded twice in the IOS and Android version.

The Mixxer

The Mixxer (http://www.language-exchanges.org/). It is a community that uses a VoIP

client to practice languages (English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, etc... You need to specify
a group to practice when joining for the first time.

What began as a small project to help Professor Meguro at Dickinson College find
Japanese partners for her students has expanded to 30 - 40,000 active users per month
around the world. The site is free and open to anyone looking to practice with a native
speaker in exchange for help with their own. Once registered, users can search for
speaking partners via the Profile Search or submit a short writing piece and ask for
corrections from native speakers. Those using the writing function are asked to return
the favour by correcting short samples in their native language. Our guidelines are very
simple. Members are here to practice a language (this is an educational site, not a dating
site), and they agree to be respectful and courteous to all users at all times. Welcome to
our community where everyone is both teacher and learner.
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 10

Activity 3.1. CoP related to language learning

Did you know any of the communities described in this section? Have you ever
used any of them to practice your English skills or any other language? Comment on your
experience in the forum.

Tools to create CoPs

If you go through some of the CoP mentioned before, you will realise that most
of them began a long time ago, being just a website to teach and learn languages. Some
of them have been active for such a long time, that they already existed even before the
appearance of the Internet.

Now that we have an idea of what a CoP is, we will introduce some of the most
used widely Computed Mediated Communication (CMC) tools. This will help you create
your own CoP either with your students in the classroom or with other working colleagues.
This image shows the most important hits in the history of communication:
Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 11
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 12

Asynchronous Computer-Mediated Communication tools (ACMC)

ACMC tools are those used to communicate with time delay, this is, not in real-time.
The first means of communication on the Internet was electronic mail. Distribution lists
permitted to send the same email to different contacts at the same time. BBS (Board Bulletin
systems) displayed threads and long conversations, until blogs appeared.

Blogs

Stauffer (2002) described weblogs or blog as

a website that has been designed to be updated with items in a linear, time-based fashion,
similar to a personal journal or diary, except that the contents are meant specifically for
public consumption.

If the concept of blog emerged as something individual, nowadays they can be

constructed in a collaborative way for leaning, informing or even sharing knowledge with the
Internet community. There are plenty of applications to create blogs (Blogger 5, WordPress 6,
LiveJournal 7, etc.). The level of collaboration depends on the options that you wish to activate
when you set it up.

Level 1
Level 2
Only the
author writes, Level 3
comments are Only one
NOT allowed. author writes. There is more Level 4
All the posts
can receive than one Level 5
author, all of Each member
comments of the
them must Blog projects.
have their own community
ID in the blog. has his/her
own blog and
all of them
share the
same blogroll.

Examples:

Level 2. Howard Gardner Blog https://howardgardner.com/ It is the blog of one of the

most widely known specialists on Education, famous for his theory of multiple intelligences (see
how you can receive RSS notifications).

5
http://www.blogger.com
6
http://www.wordpress.com
7
http://www.livejournal.com/
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 13

These two blogs were developed by UNED students for a Master subject.

Level 3. Blogs Lingüísticos para docentes artísticos.

https://blogcolaborativo20142015uned.wordpress.com/ (a collaborative blog to learn and show
how to build a blog with WordPress in opposition to Blogger)

Level 3. Shakespeare conoce a Cervantes: https://mastertic201516.wordpress.com/(A blog built

among different teams of students to explore Shakespeare & Cervantes scope in their 400th
anniversary).

When building a weblog with WordPress, having an idea of the sort of profiles available is crucial.
This chart summarises it:

Receive Send Write/edit their Write/ edit Moderate Publish Customise

updates comments own posts other posts comments posts appearance
Viewer x
Follower x x
Contributor x x x
Author x x x x
Editor x x x x x x
Administrator x x x x x x x

For more information: https://en.support.wordpress.com/user-roles/

Once you open an account at WordPress, you can also use it as a reader of other blogs,
search information in all WP Blogs, etc.

Microblogging

Although it emerged just a few years ago, this tool has revolutionised the world of
Information. Nowadays, Twitter is one of most widespread social networks both for the general
and public and for specialised areas. Although it cannot be considered as a synchronous tool, it
is so active and quick, that sometimes it can be confused with an Instant Messaging application.
In order to understand how it works, we need to learn what these terms mean:
- Tweet: A message in the social media Twitter.
- # Hashtag: Symbol used in Twitter and other social media before a relevant
keyword or phrase. It helps categorise tweets and also find them in a Twitter
search.
- Lists: A Twitter list is a curated (filtered) group of Twitter accounts.
- Follower: A person that receives your Tweets.
- Following: A person whose posts you are receiving.
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 14

- Interaction: Different ways in which you can engage with someone’s posts in
Twitter (e.g. retweeting).
- @ Connect: This symbol @ allows a Twitter user to ‘tag’ another account. It
notifies those users that they are being mentioned.
- Re-tweet: Share, forward or re-post a tweet sent by another user.
- Trending topic: It is a hashtag (#) driven topic that is immediately popular at a
certain time.
- Moments: Curated stories about what is happening around the world.

Lists are quite useful when you follow users keeping some order. In the case of this
subject, there has been created one list per unit. If we visit some of these lists, we will
find:
- Name of the list (1)
- Number of members (people/institution followed in that list) (2)
- Number of subscribers to that list, mostly “you” (3)
- Other lists owned by this profile (4)
- Tweets sent by the members of the list (5)
- Recently added members (6)

If you want to subscribe to this list, click on https://twitter.com/apps_tic_ei/lists/unit-3 and start

following it.

Remember that our Twitter profile is being used to re-tweet messages of your interest, inform
about events related to this subject, etc.
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 15

You can use these hashtags when referring to specific units:

#unit1_apps_tic_ei
#unit2_apps_tic_ei
#unit3_apps_tic_ei
#unit4_apps_tic_ei
#unit5_apps_tic_ei

Activity 3.2 First steps with Twitter (or not)

0. Open a Twitter account, if you don't have it.

1. Follow our Twitter account @apps_tic_ei, and some of the CoPs mentioned so far in
this course.

2. Subscribe the list created for Unit 3 https://twitter.com/apps_tic_ei/lists/unit-3

3. Use our hashtag for unit 3 to re-tweet some tweet related to this unit,
#unit3_apps_tic_ei

** Read more about how to use hashtags here: https://support.twitter.com/articles/49309

4. Read some of these hashtags: #eurocallgathering #iatefl #webinars #eltevents or

#libraries #mfltwitterati and comment on your experience in the forum

** You can also subscribe our course lists below:

Unit 1 https://twitter.com/apps_tic_ei/lists/unit-1

Unit 2 https://twitter.com/apps_tic_ei/lists/unit-2

Unit 3 https://twitter.com/apps_tic_ei/lists/unit-3

(The rest will be found throughout this course)

 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 16

Wikis

Perhaps one of the best definitions of a wiki can be found in the Wikipedia, the most
famous wiki on the Internet. It describes a wiki as “is a hypertext publication collaboratively
edited and managed by its own audience directly using a web browser”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki).

Given that technologically speaking a wiki is a website comprised of by different HTML

pages, some elements are essential to facilitate the edition of content. For this reason, we
find these three elements in each page:

1. Edit functions. Thanks to this function, all the members of the wiki can edit all the
contents of the page easily. In some cases, like Wikipedia, these editions can be
moderated for security reasons.
2. Discussion. This is a space aimed to debate on some possible conflicts and
perspectives of the topics dealt in each page.
3. History of editions. All the changes, mainly based on editions and insertions, can be
tracked through this function.

The following wiki has been created with MediaWiki, the same application used for
Wikipedia. This image shows the different elements of a wiki:

There are different tools to create wikis, for example, PhpWiki8, PBWorks9. You will find
similar tools here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software. aLF can integrate a
wiki in the course or community and Microsoft Teams as well.
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 17

Social networks with academic and professional aims

Most of the CoPs mentioned before are using Social Networks as a means of
communication among their members, and at the same time they can generate knowledge.
Danah and Nicol (2007) define social network websites as:

web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public

profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share
a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others
within the system.

This is probably the best way to transfer and generate knowledge nowadays. The
characteristics of these connections may vary from website to website. There are many
classifications of social networks on the internet.

We will explore here some of the most useful Social Networks for our aims, attending to the
audience intended: general, professional or academic:

• General use / purposes

We will focus on Social Networks which, although designed for purposes different to the
strictly academic or professional ones, are being used as the main way of disseminating
information among their CoP members (e.g. Twitter, already described, or Facebook).

Facebook

Founded in 2004 by a group of undergraduate students 8, It is by far the most extended social
network. It has more than 500 million followers. The associations described before are using
individual profiles, groups and websites to share their knowledge. Let us see some of the
differences and functions:

- Individual profile. It mostly reserved for people. You can find plenty of interesting
information following relevant academics like Elizabeth Hanson-Smith, Agnes Kukulska-
Hulme or any other of your interest.

- Groups. These can be “closed”-only members can see posts-, “public”, or “secret” (only
members can find the group in the directory). Some examples of CoPs who use this option
are LTSIG, CALICO, New Webheads Online Community, IATEFL TTed SIG, WorldCALL
Lounge, WikiEducator, EuroCALL.

- Pages. Its appearance is not very different from individual profiles, but one of its advantages
is that one profile can have more than one pages with different topics. Some examples of
pages can be seen on AESLA, AELFE (European Association of Languages for Specific
Purposes), TESOL-Spain, TESOL-International, and many others.

8
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 18

- Events, very useful for announcing conferences and getting an approximate number of
attendants, either online or face-to-face.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/LTLTsig/

Office 365 Teams

As you already know, just by being registered at UNED Campus, you have a whole range
of applications at your disposal. If you access your email account and then click on “Office 365”,
you will see these applications ready to use for free:
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 19

Thanks to this application, you can maintain real-time conversations, arrange meetings,
record them or share files. Each Team can also include different channels with their own
conversation threads, file space, etc. This application can be used via web, desktop or installing
an app in a mobile device. It allows you to make phone calls even to external phones. All the files
shared in the channel can be edited by all the members of the Teams using the web, desktop or
local application (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). All the files can be synchronized with your own
PC, which means that you can work locally if needed. Teams aims to substitute the use of email
and VoIP systems like Skype. All the members of an institution can be included in Teams. To
invite external users, they need to have Office 365 in their institution and be accepted by the ITs
of the host platform.

You can access to Teams through the icon in the aLF virtual course for this subject, or
following this link https://teams.microsoft.com/

Google groups

It is a service offered by Google to allow communication among its members. It can be used
through this link: https://groups.google.com/ and its appearance is quite straightforward:

The picture shown above belongs to the users' group of a corpus tool named AntConc:
https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/antconc. If you wish to create a new Google
Group, follow the instructions explained here
https://support.google.com/groups/answer/2464926?hl=en . They can be displayed in different
ways:
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 20

To create one of these groups you need to have a Gmail account but that is not a
requirement for being added to an existing group. They can be private or be visible to
everyone to subscribe.

• Professional Social Networks

After the emergence of Social Networks for general aims, some new ones were created
with a focus on spreading information and contacts at a professional level.

LinkedIn

It is one of the most widely known and it is used all by most of the CoPs described at the
beginning of this unit. It was officially launched in 2003, and nowadays it is leading the
professional networks on the Internet with more than 530 million users in more than 200 countries.
Although its most famous feature is helping people find jobs, it is used by some of its members
to set up debates on specific topics, announce events or to look for professional and academic
contact. In the same way as Facebook, there is a “wall”, or “state” site where you can share
information, and you can create groups of members to share common interests
(https://www.linkedin.com/groups/). This list shows some groups related to our field (see how they
contain some debates on avant-garde topics:

- Comparative and Historical Linguistics https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1831758/profile

(2.892 members)
- Natural Language Processing People https://www.linkedin.com/groups/131222/profile
(26.447 members)
- Metacognition: "Learning to Learn" https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1790369/profile
(10,002 members)
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 21

Once you are in the group, it is very similar to most social networks: you can create your own
conversations, or “like”, “recommend” or “comment” and share other messages. One of the added
functions of LinkedIn is the possibility to add articles and presentations, apart from writing short
messages. As you can see in the image below, you can make lists, edit fonts or include links and
images.

It is very useful if you are seeking a job or want to keep in touch with contacts related to
your professional context. Similarly to Facebook, its management becomes simpler if you access
it through the mobile app.
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 22

Activity 3.3 Facebook & LinkedIn

Before going on with other sorts of networks, we recommend you visiting some of the
Facebook & LinkedIn websites mentioned in the unit, so that you can get a better idea of how
CoPs make use of these applications. If you do not have an account on these social networks,
you can try observing the following CoPs:

1.Linguist list http://www.linguistlist.org/ (Not really a CoP but a distribution list, keeping
the same interface since its foundation in 1990).
2.The literature Network http://www.online-literature.com/forums/forum.php (BBS
interface, observe that you can follow interactions through RSS).

Pay attention to their frequency of publication and reach your own conclusions. You can
share your opinions on the forum.

• Academic social networks

We are living the era of Information, where being visible -academically speaking- is crucial if
you want to grow and be “someone” in a scientific context. On the other hand, thousands of
articles and books about different disciplines are being published every day, so knowing what is
being published about your specific topic is becoming increasingly difficult. This is the reason why
networks of this nature have experienced a high increase in the last decade. We have already
seen the social side of tools like Mendeley. We have had the opportunity to enrich our own
collaborative bibliography at the same time as we add and receive comments on some of the
references that we have shared. If part of the aims of Mendeley is to provide its users with a space
to share their own findings, and, why not, their own publications, other tools such as Academia or
Research Gate have been specially designed to expand research and connect researchers with
close interests.

Research Gate

It is an academic, social network specialised in spreading scientific production of its more

than 14 million members. Its creation was quite expected, but casual at the same time:

ResearchGate 9 began when two researchers discovered first-hand that working with a
friend or colleague based on the other side of the world was no easy task. The rapid
evolution of technology has opened the door to change; by providing you with the right
tools, we strive to facilitate scientific collaboration on a global scale.

It works very similarly to other social networks. Given that one of the aims of this network is
to spread your research, once you create an account you will be asked to search your publications
automatically so that they can be added to your profile (CV). Then, you can add more publications
manually. It does not matter if you do not have any publication to share. You can skip that step
and begin to follow other researchers of your interest. Every time they publish something new you

9
https://www.researchgate.net
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 23

will receive a notification, in case you want to read it or share it, follow it, comment on it or just
keep it for further reading. Most publications are grouped by projects so that you can locate and
follow researchers or your interest through their publications. Additionally, this tool provides you
with statistics of your visits and citations, provided you have publications added to your profile.
Although most publications can be read in their full-text version, there are others in which only the
reference and abstract are shown. You can send author a private message and ask for the full-
text version.

This menu shows the basic functions of Research Gate:

“Questions” sections are queries sent by different users, asking for help about some research
topic, etc. “Jobs” are also displayed every day in relation to your CV and areas of interest
specified in your profile. The “bell” shows you the most important updates and activities
generated in your profile. The envelope leads you to your private messages, and the blue button
allows you to add new papers, articles, conference presentations, etc.

Complementary options can be added, such as “projects” and “labs”. The first word refers to
research projects as such or to a collection of publications related to shared topic. The second
one has been devised for groups of academics who work collaboratively in one or more projects.
All the registered users can follow publications, projects, questions, etc. They can also share
other users’ publications or recommend them publicly.

Academia.edu

It is quite similar to Research Gate, with more than 103 million researchers subscribed.
“The company's mission is to accelerate the world's research”. Once accepted, you will receive
an alert every time someone searches your name on your publications in Google. More than 23
million papers have been linked to more than 1 million research interests.
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 24

Once you publish your work, you will receive alerts in your email box every time it is
quoted, or read, etc. There are Premium options that require you to pay a fee, but the basic
package is enough to spread and follow your topics of interest.

As a summary, this graph shows the use of Academia and Research Gate among
researchers nowadays:

Image taken from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/do-academic-social-

networks-share-academics-interests

Activity 3.4 Research Gate & Academia (Optional)

Given that these two social networks can provide you with more bibliography on topics of
your interest, create an account in one of them (Research Gate or Academia) and share your
experiences in the forum.
Try to follow papers and projects related to your area/s of interest.

Synchronous CMC tools (SCMC)

Synchronous communication is described as the communication processes or channels

where participants interact at the same time, in contrast to asynchronous communication or
deferred communication. This technology has improved immensely in the past years, the quality
of the sound and image for instance is now quite good, which enables a better environment for
online meetings and other sorts of events.

Instant Messaging (IM) VoIP

It is a way of communicating over the Internet, which offers an instantaneous transmission

of voice messages from sender to receiver. Most of them add the possibility of including video to
the conversation, so face-to-face meetings are being replaced by this sort of technology,
characterised by increasing the quality of the calls.
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 25

Skype (for Business) & Teams chat

Skype has become one of the most valued VoIP tool thanks to its quality sound and
reliability. Although you need to pay to speak from phone to phone, it is entirely free if it is used
to communicate via PC. It can also be installed on mobile devices with good results. Among other
functionalities, there is a possibility to create groups of speakers, sharing the desktop with other
users, recording conversations, etc. It was acquired by Microsoft recently so that it has been
integrated into some of its products. Thanks to this transaction, the users of Office 365 can enjoy
a better quality of sound, image and additional functions with the “Skype for business”. This
application lets you add up to 250 users to the same conversation, when the basic one permitted
a maximum of ten. To use it, you need to install a different application to the basic Skype:
https://portal.office.com/account#installs

One of the most important advantages of this version is that you can search all the
members of your institution in your directory and even add others from other institutions if you
know their ID. All UNED members will appear with their UNED user ID. (e.g.
mrodriguezxxx@alumno.uned.es). You can also record meetings and share desks.

All in all, due to the effort that Microsoft is doing to promote Teams, it is quite probable
that Skype for Business will soon be replaced by Teams (chat) in the future. It is important to
know that there is no need to belong to any Team to chat with individual users. To call someone,
open Teams and click on the chat icon. Type the complete name of the person you want to talk
to and wait for a response. You can use text, voice or video. All the conversations can be recorded
and saved in Streams 10 by default.

Activity 3.5 Practice with Teams to chat

Install Teams for Desktop in your computer or the app in your mobile device and try to maintain
a voice conversation or chat with any other student or the teaching team (Paz Díez/Elena Martín
Monje). You can also try the web version (https://login.microsoftonline.com/) if you don’t want
to install it.

Share your experience in the forum.

10
Streams is video application, very similar to You Tube, which can be used either privately or publicly.
https://web.microsoftstream.com/.
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 26

Mobile apps

In a world with more mobile phones per citizen than PCs, synchronously written communication
led by desktop IM has been replaced by mobile apps like WhatsApp, Facebook IM, Telegram or
Viber.

Whatsapp

WhatsApp? 11 is one of the most common mobile IM version. The latest versions allow to
create groups and distribution lists, send voice messages, share locations and send the chatlog
to an email account so that it can be saved for later analysis of discussion if needed. Each group
can manage pictures, links and other documents so that they can be exported to other tools. It
can also be installed in a computer from links like this: https://download.cnet.com/WhatsApp-
for-PC/3000-2150_4-76640933.html.

Webinars

Webinars are "virtual" seminars. The term "webinar" was firstly mentioned by Eric R. Kolb
in 1998 to describe the online meeting service his company developed. They are synchronous,
real-time online conference events that gather people together at a given moment to listen to,
observe, and participate in a presentation. They began as video conference tools to be used in a
room prepared for that aim. New webinar tools are based on constructivist learning theories,
which can hold seminar sessions with collaborative new ways of learning.

This link contains a list of videoconferencing tools and a comparison of their main
features:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_conferencing_software.

As you can see, most of them require a proprietary license except for cases like
BigBlueButton 12, which is part of Mozilla’s Open Innovation program. Most of these webinar tools
share similar features: voice and text chat, different profiles to attend the conference -as a guest,

11
http://www.whatsapp.com/
12
http://www.bigbluebutton.org/
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 27

presenter, administrator-, record the whole session, display documents, etc.

Blackboard Collaborate

It is an IMS company that bought recently two of the most widely used webinar tools, Elluminate 13
and Wimba (initially IM for e-learning environments). The result is the combination of interface and
technology of both of them. It includes options for moderation, group creation, recording, etc. using
voice mainly. It could be integrated within multiple platforms, even mobile ones and LMS as well.
Have a look a these two web links: Blackboard Collaborate User Interface
Tour and https://www.blackboard.com/collaborate-trial

Adobe Connect 14

You may have seen it in some of the webinars organised by the publisher Macmillan or
by RefWorks. This link shows the functionalities of its latest version:

https://www.adobe.com/products/adobeconnect.html

AVIP (UNED)

This platform has been developed by UNED to deliver its tutorships in a synchronous
environment. It can be used either with an interactive blackboard, as an alternative to the traditional
board, or from any computer via Internet. It allows uploading documents, which can be very useful
for these online classes or webinars. The presenter can also answer questions via text or voice or
even make use of a digital board to enrich the explanations.

AVIP has improved its interface, and at the same time it has changed its technology, from
Java to HTML5, which is more user-friendly. It also allows sharing the desktop, something quite
important in a subject like this.

13
http://www.elluminate.com/Products/International/?id=201
14
http://www.adobe.com/products/adobeconnect.html
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 28

As it can be seen above, the interface changes a little bit from the live session to the recorded one.

Google Hangout

It is one of the options available from the Google+ platform to broadcast events, organise simple
videoconferences, or record your own videos (although you should be aware that they are stored on
YouTube, etc. It comes to replace the former Google talk and it can be opened through this link:
https://hangouts.google.com/
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 29

Thanks to this tool, it is possible to share the desktop with your audience, create groups, use if
you’re a mobile phone, etc. You can connect with people at any time but you can also arrange a
meeting using Google Calendar, for a certain day and time.

To learn more about this tool, you can watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2-
tsGelk4U

Final Questions

Now that we have finished this unit, we encourage you to answer these questions in the thread
created for that aim in the unit forum.

• What do you think about this unit? Did you already know the tools we have presented
here? Have you learnt anything new?
• Do you consider it is important to work in collaboration nowadays? Why? Why not?
• Do you feel yourself as a part of a CoP -UNED students- after having being part of various
virtual courses in your different subjects? Do you have any sense of community after all
these years?

Conclusions

We have only seen a small sample of the wide range of options available on the Internet to work
in collaboration. In the next unit will explore some of the most important research software
applications to make our work more consistent and reliable.

To know more

GoConqr https://www.goconqr.com/es-ES/groups/38516/show_study_aids(It is a good

collection of mind maps and other resources to revise contents but take into account that some
of the things that appear there may not be included in the contents of this unit).
 Unit 3. Tools for Communities of Practice 30

Bibliographic references

Carretero, S., Vuorikari, R., & Punie, Y. (2017). DigComp 2.1: The Digital Competence
Framework for Citizens. With eight proficiency levels and examples of use. In Publications
Office of the European Union.
http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC106281/web-
digcomp2.1pdf_(online).pdf

Ferrari, A. (2013). Digital Competence in Practice: An Analysis of Frameworks. Joint Research

Centre of the European Commission. https://doi.org/10.2791/82116

Stauffer, T. (2002). Blog on : the essential guide to building dynamic weblogs. McGraw-
Hill/Osborne.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. In Cambridge

University Press. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.2277/0521663636
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 1
applied to research

Last updated 24/11/2021

Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies applied to research

Table of contents

Brainstorming ............................................................................................................................ 2
Learning Results........................................................................................................................ 2
Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 2
Visualisation of information ....................................................................................................... 3
Data collection ........................................................................................................................... 9
Tools to improve the retrieval and analysis of data ............................................................... 9
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 2
applied to research

Brainstorming

Please, devote some minutes to think about these questions. Then, share your answers
in the forum.

- When you need to write an assignment, do you write it just paragraph after
paragraph or you plan it first, doing an outline of what you want to include? Do you do it
on paper, on the computer, or do you use some sort of app?

- Have you ever created concept maps to study?

- Have you ever designed an online questionnaire?

- Do you take notes when you need to write an essay? How do you do it? Do you
use a notebook? Post-its?

Learning Results

By the end of this unit, you will be able to:

- Plan a research project individually and in collaboration with others.

- Learn how to collect data to conduct research.

- Identify the most important tools to collect and analyse data to perform qualitative
research.

- Identify the most important tools to collect and analyse data to perform quantitative
research.

Introduction

Now that we know where to locate information and save it (Competence area 1)
and communicate with others to spread and make it flow (Competence area 2), it is time
to create content (Competence area 3) based on collected data. This graph summarises
the main points seen up to this point of the course so that you can understand better
what follows.
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 3
applied to research

Unit 1
Databases,
Unit 2
Journals,
RefWorks to manage
Unit 3
RSS, bibliographic references
ebooks, individualy, etc. CoPs to share our knowledge,
Direct exports, Lists of learn from each other, being
etc. up-to-date, etc.
bibliographic references
automatically, etc. Social Networks as the
Mendeley, to work in group, evolution of fora & distribution
lists.
Easy pdf annotation, etc.
Scope of Twitter, Research
Gate & Academia to
disseminate information.

This unit will focus on two main areas:

- Planning a project /research, with the help of visual representations.

- Resources to gather and analyse data (quantitative, mainly based on statistics and
numbers; qualitative, based on more subjective methods: opinions, description of
processes, etc.)

To study the first area, we will use tools to build mind maps and concept maps, using
different technological devices: computer, tablet or mobile phone. Some of the
applications described in this unit may seem difficult to understand, but the aim is just to
get a general idea of the existence of these tools, in the case we need them in the future,
not to master them. As an example, we will learn how to elaborate and deliver your own
questionnaires online or to take multimedia notes that can be useful for your end of
degree dissertation (TFG).

Before continuing with this unit, it would be good to read Chapter 6 from Doing a
Research Project in English Studies : A guide for students (Buckingham, 2015), which is
entitled “Collecting data”, for a better understanding of the concepts included in the unit.
This resource can be read online at the UNED library.

Visualisation of information

At this point most of you will probably be familiar with the maps we are going to
explore next, and will have already created one, either by hand or using some computer
application. These visual aids can be used in teaching to present a general perspective
of some unit to your students, learn vocabulary or take notes of spontaneous ideas to be
included in an academic essay.
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 4
applied to research

Before beginning to write any work, it is crucial to have a general idea of what you would
like to do and how. This is the reason why a good brainstorming before conducting any
research is so important. As you can see, there are different techniques to visualise
information as shown in the illustration below.

A concept map is a top-down diagram showing the relationships between

concepts, including cross-connections among concepts, and their manifestations.
(Eppler, 2006, based on J.D.Novak).

A mindmap is hierarchical and shows relationships among pieces of the whole.

It is often created around a single concept, drawn as an image in the centre of a blank
page, to which associated representations of ideas such as images, words and parts of
words are added. Major ideas are connected directly to the central concept, and other
ideas branch out from those. (Chuck Frey, 2016a)
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 5
applied to research

A conceptual diagram is a systematic depiction of an abstract concept in pre-

defined category boxes with specified relationships, typically based on a theory or mode
(Eppler, 2006).

A visual metaphor is a graphic structure that uses the shape and elements of a
familiar natural or manmade artefact or of an easily recognisable activity or story to
organise content meaningfully and use the associations with the metaphor to convey
additional meaning about the content (Eppler, 2006).

These representations are also used to analyse relationships between members

of a community, through messages exchanged in a forum, a social network, etc.
(Rettberg, 2013). This section will introduce some of the most relevant applications to
create this sort of representations. We will focus on mind maps. (You can read more
about the difference between Concept maps and mind maps here (Chuck Frey, 2016b),
although it is “Infographics” one of the latest terms used to define the new ways of visual
representation (Becerra D., Muñoz A., Núñez-Lagos B., Rebollo J., 2016).

Mind Manager

Mind Manager 1 was the first tool designed by Mindjet to create concept and mind
maps, -depending on the mode that you select from the beginning:

It can be integrated into different Office applications, generate a pdf, synchronise

with mobile gadgets, etc. It also allows capturing information from the web to be

1
https://www.mindmanager.com/en/product/mindmanager/
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 6
applied to research

organised later with the possibility of synchronising with your mobile device, something
that can be useful if you need to take notes when travelling or you do not have your PC
with you. The extension of the files created with this tool is .mm and, in the same way it
happened with BMAs, you can also import and export from some formats to others.

FreeMind

It is an open-source tool that allows creating mind maps. It is very similar to the
previous one, but with fewer functionalities. However, it allows exporting to many
extensions (HTML, pdf, word, .rft, etc.). It is written in Java, but it has no possibility of
synchronising with tablets. It can only be installed on PCs.

This is one of the mind maps generated by FreeMind 2:

On the left you can find plenty of icons that can be added to the nodes while you
are working. At the bottom you can add notes for each node. From “Archive” you can
export and import different extensions.

2
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 7
applied to research

CMapTools

It is another example of free software. It allows connections between published concept

maps but requires Cmap Server. This is the front page of the CMapTools’ 3 website:

One of the main characteristics of CMapTools is that you can share and elaborate
your maps in collaboration with other users. You can browse the different products here
https://cmap.ihmc.us/; it is free to use.

The iPad version is https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cmaptools/id927987108?mt=8&ign-

mpt=uo%3D4

GoConqr

Apart from all these tools, we can find the possibility to create maps as an option of some
authoring tools like GoConqr. This map shows the classification of some CoP tools.
Some of them are not included in the contents of this course, although they have been
created by some of the students enrolled.

3
http://cmap.ihmc.us/
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 8
applied to research

Additionally, this company has just launched a new tool to create flowcharts (diagrams
which show a workflow or process) https://www.goconqr.com/en/flowchart-maker/ A
flowchart processor cycle can also be described regarding an outline, so long as the
outline indicates the progression of steps either forwards, backwards or looping
(PennState, n.d.)

You will find plenty of examples in our workshop: https://www.goconqr.com/es-

ES/groups/40658/show_study_aids (remember to log in first) and also some video
tutorials to learn how to use them. There is also an app for mobile phones, which is quite
easy to use. This map was created by one of the students of this subject, and it
summarises all the elements of this unit: https://www.goconqr.com/en/p/7132250

You will find other free and proprietary tools here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concept_mapping_software

Activity 4.1 Creating maps with GoConqr

Go through some of the maps created for this unit and leave your comments to some
of them. You can also suggest your own map for this or any other topic.
https://www.goconqr.com/es-ES/groups/38516/show_study_aids (remember to log in
first).

This activity can be done with your mobile device, if you download the app
(IOS/Android).
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 9
applied to research

Data collection

Before continuing with the study of this section, you may be interested in enrolling
this NOOC: Información y Alfabetización informacional. Almacenamiento y recuperación
de información, datos y contenido digital https://iedra.uned.es/courses/course-
v1:UNED+AlmacenamientoBasico+2021/about (Spanish), as a preliminary introduction to
different types of data, and how to keep them depending on their format.

Tools to improve the retrieval and analysis of data

Now that we know what to do and how to do it, it is time to collect data, to be able
to analyse it later. As mentioned before, there are two ways of doing this: 1) following
statistical methods (qualitative research) or 2) conducting research based on more
subjective techniques (interviews, observation, etc.).

1. Reading specialised
literature

4b. Way to collect data 2. The selection of

(qualititave bibliographic references
/quantitative) is ready

3. We have been
4a. We have a general
consulting different
idea of what to do (Mind
CoPs for additional
maps)
information

Although data can be obtained through other methods which may not be
mediated by technology, it is important to be aware of the existence of these tools in
order to be more efficient in your work. If used correctly they will help you save time. All
the tools described here can be applied to other contexts, not only research. They can
be very useful:

o to analyse the needs of your teaching environment (in order to improve

your teaching quality),
o to design the syllabus of a new subject,
o to elaborate your TFG,
o to plan a collaborative project at work,
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 10
applied to research

o to study for competitive exams (e.g. “oposiciones”),

o to write papers,
o etc.

Regardless of the type of research we are carrying out (quantitative or qualitative), we

will explore two sorts of tools. The first one aims to collect data, and the second ones are
used to study the data retrieved, as shown in the image below:

• Questionnaires
• Observation notes Notes
• Interviews,
Collecting • Copora,
data • etc

• QACDAS
• Spreadsheets
• Statistics suits
Analising data

I. Qualitative research

Before studying the tools related to this section of the course, we need to revise
the basic elements and modalities of this type of investigation. This methodology entails
collecting primarily textual data and examining it using interpretive analysis (Heigham &
Croker, 2009). So, the main way to collect data is by creating questionnaires (mostly
open), preparing interviews, observing the process to be analysed, etc.

The following chart shows the main features of the five approaches/ varieties of
qualitative research 4:

4
You will find a bigger image of this table in the virtual course.
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 11
applied to research

Now that we have an idea of the implications of qualitative research, it is time to

explore some tools that will help us manage this sort of data. Some of them have been
specially designed to compile and analyse qualitative data (Atlas.ti, NVivo). These are
known as QUAQDAS, an acronym that means “Computer Assisted Qualitative Data
AnalysiS. Others are applications which have been created for other users, but they are
enormously useful for qualitative purposes (Evernote, Audacity, Excel, etc.).

a) Qualitative research software for obtaining data

The tools described in this section will help us in the process of gathering
information coming from the main instruments used in qualitative research: observation,
questionnaires and interviews.

Observation

It is a technique that can be used to gather data for your qualitative research. You
can just take some notes while you watch, or record everything for later study.

Some years ago, the only way to record notes for a research project was by
writing down everything you observed by hand. Now, thanks to Web 2.0 there are tools
specially designed to save multimedia notes. Although one of the pioneer ones was
Evernote, inspired in the traditional Post-Its, nowadays even Google (Google Keep)
and Microsoft (OneNote) have launched their own apps.

Most of them share the most basic functions: Creating and sharing text, image
and audio notes, organised in tags and accessible through different platforms and
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 12
applied to research

devices. To focus on just one tool, we will explore Evernote. Click here to watch an
introductory video about this tool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p_7snQhdLI

Apart from the basic version, you can add complements in your browser, such as
“Clipper” to capture images from the internet and many other features.

You can also read this article to learn more about the differences between
Evernote and OneNote:

Vega, C. (2017). Evernote vs OneNote | Feature Comparison | Digital Trends.

Retrieved November 24, 2017, from https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/evernote-
vs-onenote/

Activity 4.2 Observation tasks with Evernote /OneNote

1) Create an account in Evernote.

2) Open a notebook with the name of this subject.

3) Add a note where you jot down what you have learnt in this unit.

4) Add the clipper extension to your browser. Watch this tutorial to learn how to
use it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a29RyJNbkU

5) Download the desktop app & mobile app and synchronise your notes.

** If you do not want to create a new account, you can try with OneNote (Office
365) https://login.microsoftonline.com or Google Keep
https://www.google.com/keep/

Comment on your experience in the forum suggesting other possible uses for this
tool.

Designing questionnaires

Questionnaires are any written instruments that present respondents with a

series of questions or statements to which they are to react either by writing out their
answers or selecting from among existing answers (Brown, 2001). The reading of the
third chapter of this book would be highly recommended before continuing (available at
the UNED library):

Brown, J. D. (2015). Introducing Needs Analysis and English for Specific Purposes.
Florence, United States: Taylor and Francis.

Although we have introduced questionnaires in qualitative research, they could

be applied to mixed methods or even pure quantitative research when they are analysed
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 13
applied to research

statistically. If we want to design useful qualitative questionnaires, the ideal would be to

leave most items as open questions, but it is more efficient to make use of Likert scale 5
methods or even true-false items. If you are interested in elaborating a good
questionnaire for applied linguistics purposes, this book (Dörnyei, 2007) will be of great
help.

Traditionally, these tools were elaborated and delivered on paper so that they
could be processed with a machine (if available) or manually. Nowadays, there are plenty
of tools to create online forms that you can download from the Internet for free or as a
demo with some restrictions. For many years SurveyMonkey 6 or Zoomerang 7 have been
the main options. However, most of these applications were not free, had some
limitations of use and showed a high amount of advertising while submitting. Another
option was using an HTML editor like FrontPage 8 or Dreamweaver 9, but the first of them
became obsolete some years ago, and the second one required installation and paying
a license. This is the reason why many users have resorted to Google Form, included in
the cloud storage system known as Google Drive. It makes forms easy to create, deliver
and complete, even from your mobile device). These online office applications offer the
possibility of working entirely online without the need to install anything on your
computer. In the case of smartphones or tablets, this can be a very suitable option if you
need to access your information from different places. Therefore, Google forms offer
different views:

- Editing view (to create your form, even in a collaborative way).

- View form, the final version ready to be sent to your respondents.
- Responses summary (including automatic percentages and graphs).
- Spreadsheet view (downloadable into your PC in different formats).

This video tutorial will show you how to create and deliver your own form
https://youtu.be/gwOw61CxxMM

You can also create forms using Office 365. Just go to your Office 365 and open
the tool to create them: https://forms.office.com .Once there, you will need to think of
a title, add different questions and share the resultant URL so that other students can
access to complete it. Only UNED members can fill it up by default, but you can
customise it so that others can access as well. This video shows how to create and
manage Microsoft Forms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvWQXYl_aV0

5
A Likert scale is a psychological measurement device that is used to gauge attitudes, values, and
opinions. It functions by having a person complete a questionnaire that requires them to indicate the
extent to which they agree or disagree with a series of statements.
6
http://es.surveymonkey.com/
7
http://www.zoomerang.com/
8
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8139
9
http://www.adobepress.com/articles/article.asp?p=1332862
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 14
applied to research

Activity 4.3 Creating online questionnaires with Google Forms / Microsoft

Forms

Think about questions that you would like to ask your course mates about a topic of
your interest. Then, create a five-item questionnaire and share it with the whole group
so that they can complete it. Try to use Microsoft Forms: https://forms.office.com/
You can also share the results obtained if you so wish.

Try to include one question following the "Likert scale". Learn more about this here:
http://study.com/academy/lesson/likert-scale-definition-examples-analysis.html

Another option is to use Google Drive forms. This video tutorial will show you how
to do it: https://youtu.be/gwOw61CxxMM

Don't forget to share your experience in the forum.

Interviews

Another way of collecting data in a qualitative study is by interviewing the

participants. Dörnyei distinguishes different types of interview, depending on the
number of participants involved, the structure and its purposes (Dörnyei, 2007). On
many occasions, these interviews are recorded and processed for later analysis. If you
need some help with the transcriptions of the dialogues, you can make use of
specialised software, which will be seen at the end of this section.

Tools to record conversations

When you hold an interview, there are two main ways to do this: 1) face-to-face
interviews and 2) meetings held on the Internet through VoIP or another kind of
synchronous Computer Mediated Communication. In the first case, the most usual
method of recording would be a mobile device or a camera, if body language and
gestures are relevant in your study. For recordings on the Internet there are different
options:
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 15
applied to research

- Using the operative system recorder (included by default in most

computers).

- Using the Webinar option, if this is the chosen environment.

- Installing programs to edit sound files. This is the case of Audacity (open
source), Adobe Audition 10, or Praat (for phonetic purposes) 11.

- Skype for business already includes this option, and also Teams.

Audacity 12

It is one of the most extended tools. It works with many different extensions,
including .wav and .mp3 included, although you will need to download a special plugin
to do this.

The interface is quite friendly, and it offers many options to the user.

Once you have a sound file open, you can create, copy, paste or edit any
fragment. You need to install a plugin called LAME to convert your files into MP3 from
this URL: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/plugins

Watch this tutorial https://youtu.be/aCisC3sHneM to learn how to use this

application.

10
https://www.adobe.com/es/products/audition.html
11
http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/
12
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/?lang=es
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 16
applied to research

As mentioned at the beginning, you can always use your OS sound recorder, but
it will probably have less sound quality, and it does not have the option to edit the sound
recorded in the same way Audacity does.

Software to transcribe your interviews

When using qualitative research methods you will need to transcribe all your
audio data gathered, so that the categorisation of the different topics and themes
discussed can be done more accurately. The use of the specialised software will help us
with this task.

Transana 13

It is not only one of the most widely used tools to do transcriptions, but also to
perform other qualitative tasks. It identifies analytically interesting clips, assigns
keywords to clips, arranges and rearranges clips, creates complex collections of
interrelated clips, explores relationships between applied keywords, and shares your
analysis with colleagues. The result is a new way of focusing on your data and a new
way of managing large collections of video and audio files and clips.

This is a transcription analysed with Transana:

As it can be observed, you can synchronise your data with video too. Thanks to
its last improvements, this tool can be compared to the functionalities of other specialised
software for qualitative studies because the last versions include: categorisation,
collaborative research, and data integration among others. Other similar options to
transcribe audio files for free are:

13
http://www.transana.org/
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 17
applied to research

TranscriberAG (open source) 14 or Express Scribe Transcription Software 15.

However, they are not very effective if your aim is working with non-native speakers of
English, and they are not as complete as Transana. Microsoft Teams also allows an
option to transcribe recorded meetings 16.

b) Analysing your collected data with CAQDAS (Computer Assisted Qualitative Data
AnalysiS)

Once we have gathered all the data, we will need to categorise it and analyse it.
As mentioned before, these tools are particularly relevant for research studies, so you
may not need to use them at the moment, but it is good to know that they exist
because they can save you time and they will add quality to your studies.

In the case of qualitative research, this sort of software is known as CAQDAS

(Computer Assisted Qualitative Data AnalysiS). In comparison to the software
designed for quantitative studies, they are far fewer options available and they are all
quite recent. This is due to a more solid tradition in quantitative research, typical os
empirical sciences like Physics, Maths, etc.

The list of tasks described below (Silver & Lewins, n.d.) have been taken from a book
which explores the three of the most relevant tools to manage and analyse qualitative
data (NVivo, Atlas.ti & MAX.qda):

14
http://transag.sourceforge.net/
15

https://www.nch.com.au/scribe/index.html?kw=transcription%20software%20free&gclid=Cj0KCQiAq97
uBRCwARIsADTziya_uFq7RayBrbY97zmKvGOpanSozo7eRQSAw7lNPb_f_J4Au1wNIfsaAqCmEALw_wcB
16
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams/Enabling-Transcription-for-Recorded-
Meetings/m-p/518288
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 18
applied to research

We will focus on two of them, which are commercial products (NVivo & Atlas.ti),
apart from an additional one, which is open-source software (Digital Replay System).
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 19
applied to research

 NVivo

It is one of the most famous CAQDAS with a proprietary license. It allows working
with the main elements of qualitative research and in multiple formats. Although the
license is quite pricey, there is the possibility to download a 30-day demo17 if you want
to try it. It also includes the possibility of working with mixed methods (qualitative &
quantitative) including data from several web 2.0 applications (social networks, Evernote,
Twitter, etc.).

The following screenshot shows some of the elements of NVivo, such as folders,
searching options, nodes, reports, etc.

It also permits to create graphs with data extracted from Twitter and other social
networks:

17
https://www.qsrinternational.com/nvivo-qualitative-data-analysis-software/try-nvivo
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 20
applied to research

You can find some NVivo on-demand webinars here:

https://www.qsrinternational.com/nvivo-qualitative-data-analysis-software/resources/on-
demand-webinars

 Atlas.ti

It was first developed by researchers from the University of Berlin as an

interdisciplinary collaborative project between psychologists, computer scientists,
linguists and future users during the years 1989-92. The menu is mainly divided into four
sections: Documents, Quotations, Codes and Memos. Although you need to pay to use
the complete version of this application, the demo can be used for an unlimited time with
the following features:

It is not possible to save projects that exceed a certain size, although you can open
and use projects of any size. Maximum allowable sizes are:

Ten primary documents (of unlimited size)

100 quotations (= data segments)

50 codes

30 memos
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 21
applied to research

Ten network views

auto backup is disabled.

Follow the link below to watch a video about the main features of this tool: What's
New in ATLAS.ti 9

New versions are being improved to work collaboratively, in a network, and making
it easy to work with different documents.

Free seminars are shown on the website to learn how to use this application.
http://atlasti.com/learning-old/free-training/#Free-Webinars

QDA Miner

Although it is not completely free, it is less expensive than others like the ones
previously mentioned. It has a Lite version for students 18 which allows to do some of the
QAQDAS tasks, such as textual analysis, coding, annotating or exporting graphs to
different formats.

18
https://provalisresearch.com/products/qualitative-data-analysis-software/freeware/
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 22
applied to research

II Quantitative research

This methodology involves collecting primarily numerical data and analysing

statistical methods.

Before dealing with these tools, it is essential to understand the meaning of the following
terms:

-Sample: Group of participants whom the researcher examines in an empirical

investigation. There are different ways to select the sample in order to be as exact as we
can.

- Population: Group of people whom the study is about.

- Type of close-ended items contained in the questionnaires, which might be the majority.
They might be formulated according to the ‘Likert scale’, which take their name from their
creator. They consist of a characteristic statement and respondents are asked to indicate
the extent to which they agree or disagree with it by marking one of the responses
ranging from `strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree.' Apart from this type, others may be
included, such as true-false, multiple-choice, open-ended questions, etc.

- Hypothesis, described by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as a ‘proposition tentatively

assumed in order to draw out its logical or empirical consequences and test its
consistency with facts that are known or may be determined’.

As we did with the qualitative research, the tools described in this section have been
divided into two parts: 1) applications to collect data and 2) software to help you in the
process of analysing the results.

Collecting data Analysing data

• Close-ended • Excel
quesionnaires • SPSS
• Corpora • PSPP
•R
• MATLAB

a) Quantitative research software for obtaining data

Apart from the questionnaires mentioned before to obtain qualitative data, we can
also obtain data directly from primary texts, measuring some phenomenon objectively
by controlled means (e.g. assessing response time or behavioural frequency)” (Dörney,
2007).
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 23
applied to research

Corpora tools

A corpus is a collection of pieces of language text in electronic form, selected according

to external criteria to represent (Sinclair, 2005).

When dealing with texts and oral communication, corpora may be of great help.
Although we can have free access to several corpora, we can create our own corpus
with texts gathered by ourselves.

One of the most known corpora tools is WordSmith Tools 19, set up in 1996 by Oxford
University Press and Lexical Analysis Software Ltd. Most corpora software has these
three elements: Concord, keywords, frequency. The following screenshot shows the
steps to set your default configuration.

This program is the one used by Oxford University Press to elaborate their
dictionaries, but it also is being used by language teachers and students, researchers
and translators all over the world. Apart from this, there are other concordancers such
as AntCord14F 20, although a complete one is WordSmith Tool. If you visit its user forum,
you will get an idea of the potential and functionalities of this tool:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/wordsmithtools

If you are interested in learning how to use corpora in your teaching and research,
these are a MOOC launched at least twice a year:
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/corpus-linguistics

19
http://www.lexically.net/wordsmith/
20
http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software.html
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 24
applied to research

Activity 4.4 An introduction to the use of corpora

Watch the following video about the use of corpora & statistics in
To learn how to use SPSS English Studies: https://canal.uned.es/mmobj/index/id/26544.
applied to languages learning,
think about Reading this book:
Would you like to learn more about corpora? Register in this
http://cw.routledge.com/textb MOOC: Corpus Linguistics: Method, Analysis, Interpretation
ooks/9780805861853/ https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/corpus-linguistics

Share your impressions in the forum.

b) Quantitative research software for managing data

Once you have collected a minimum quantity of data to

begin your analysis, you may be able to export them either in a
direct or indirect way to a statistical program. Web-based tests and
questionnaires usually report their results in CSV format, which can
be read by any spreadsheet. In the case of Excel, creating a graph
using the data retrieved from a questionnaire is quite easy.

SPSS is probably the most famous statistical package, but it

requires a proprietary license. If your institution has not paid for it,
you can find other alternatives such as R 21, PSPP 22 or MATLAB 23.

SPSS.
This book contains a website
we you can download the keys It is the most common software to perform applied statistics,
to many of the exercises although it is presented by its IBM developers as a business
proposed in the book, links and product. It is integrated into a family of products that address the
figures among man other entire analytical process, from planning to data collection to
things. analysis, reporting and deployment.
---
Once it is installed you can add more than 12 functional modules
to improve your research. This is the view of a black document.

21
http://www.r-project.org/
22
http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/
23
http://www.mathworks.co.uk/data-analysis/
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 25
applied to research

PSPP

PSPP is very similar in appearance and functionalities to SPSS. It is being used by

market researchers, psychologists and sociologists. SPSS has a data view tab
(spreadsheet), a variable view tab (to create variables and define their characteristics)
and has an easy-to-use point-and-click interface. Although primarily a point-and-click
software, PSPP also has a command syntax language.

MATLAB

It works with spreadsheets or traditional programming languages such as C, C++,

or Visual Basic. ‘These products combine a powerful numeric engine and programming
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 26
applied to research

environment with interactive tools for statistical analysis, image processing, signal
processing, and other domains’. Among other features, you can:

- Access data from files, spreadsheets, databases, test equipment, data acquisition
hardware, other software, or the Web.

- Explore your data to identify trends, test hypotheses, and estimate uncertainty.

- Create customised algorithms, visualisations, and models and publish customised

reports.

- Share your analysis tools as MATLAB code or as standalone desktop or Web

applications.

** Remember that you can download it from the UNED website once logged in.

R is a GNU environment for statistical computing and graphics developed at Bell

Laboratories (formerly AT&T, now Lucent Technologies). It compiles and runs on a wide
variety of UNIX platforms and similar systems (including FreeBSD and Linux), Windows
and MacOS. It has been conceived for pure statistics. The following image shows its Mac
interface:

Future Learn also has a MOOC to learn how to use R, “Introduction to R for Data
Science”, https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/data-science , in case you wish to learn
more.
 Unit 4. Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies 27
applied to research

Final questions

Do you think the tools to create concept maps will be useful for you? Have you tried any
of them? If so, what was your experience?

Thinking about your End of Degree Assignment (TFG), would you prefer to do a
qualitative or a quantitative study?

Did you have any difficulty to understand the last section of this unit?

References

Becerra D., Muñoz A., Núñez-Lagos B., Rebollo J., S. P. A. (2016). Stats ‹ Apps TIC in
English Studies — WordPress.com. Retrieved November 17, 2016, from
https://mjordano2013.wordpress.com/2016/01/16/infographics-english-
studies/?iframe=true&theme_preview=true
Brown, J. D. (2001). Using surveys in language programs. Cambridge Language
Teaching Library., 319 p. BOOK.
Buckingham, L. (2015). Doing a Research Project in English Studies : A guide for
students. Oxford: Taylor and Francis.
Chuck Frey. (2016a). Concept maps vs. mind maps. Retrieved November 17, 2016,
from http://mindmappingsoftwareblog.com/concept-maps-vs-mind-maps/
Chuck Frey. (2016b). Concept maps vs. mind maps.
Dörnyei, Z. (2007). Research Methods in Applied Linguistics. Oxford University Press.
Eppler, M. J. (2006). A comparison between concept maps, mind maps, conceptual
diagrams, and visual metaphors as complementary tools for knowledge
construction and sharing. Information Visualization.
https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.ivs.9500131
Heigham, J., & Croker, R. A. (2009). Qualitative research in applied linguistics : a
practical introduction. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
PennState. (n.d.). Accessibility at Penn State | Flowcharts & Concept Maps.
Retrieved November 18, 2016, from http://accessibility.psu.edu/images/flowcharts/
Rettberg, J. W. (2013). Tutorial: How to explore a network graph of electronic literature
in Gephi – jill/txt. Retrieved November 17, 2016, from http://jilltxt.net/?p=3730
Silver, C., & Lewins, A. (n.d.). Using software in qualitative research : a step-by-step
guide.
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 1
publishing industry

Last updated 09/12/2021

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bcnbits/363 1

Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and publishing

industry

Brainstorming ............................................................................................................................ 2
Learning results ......................................................................................................................... 2
Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 2
Manuals of Style ........................................................................................................................ 3
Formatting your paper ........................................................................................................... 3
MLA Style Modern Language Association ............................................................................ 4
APA (American Psychological Association) .......................................................................... 6
Periodical publications for the General Public ......................................................................... 12
Publications on general topics (Newspapers, Magazines, etc.) .......................................... 12
Software developed for Academic /Scientific journals and conference management ........ 16
Creating a book/ e-book .......................................................................................................... 18
Internet accessibility and mobility ............................................................................................ 22
To learn more about this topic ................................................................................................. 23
Final work / PEC ...................................................................................................................... 23
Final questions ........................................................................................................................ 24
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 2
publishing industry

Brainstorming

Have you ever needed to follow any kind of guidelines to write an assignment?

Have you ever created your own publication?

Have you ever tried to create your own e-book?

Have you ever published something on the web taking into account its
accessibility?

Learning results

By the end of this unit you will:

- Understand the very basic rules to format an academic piece of work and use
bibliographic references appropriately.

- Recognise some of the tools used in the publication and management of a

magazine or an academic journal.

- Identify some of the most important applications to create a printed or

electronic book.

Introduction

In the last unit we discussed how to plan our research work and what kind
of software to use depending on the methodology chosen. We will finish this
course by learning how to format an academic paper according to some
standards, taking our first steps into the publishing industry.
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 3
publishing industry

1. Reading specialised
literature (Databases)

2. Management of
5. Format and
bibliographic
publication
references

4b. Way to collect 3. CoP for more

data (qualititave specialized
/quantitative) information

4a. We have a general

idea of what to do
(Mind maps)

Manuals of Style

In the field of Humanities, there are two main styles to format academic
papers: MLA (Modern Language Association) and APA (American Psychological
Association), apart from Chicago, which will not be studied in this course. The
former was initially devised for topics related to Modern Languages and
Humanities in general, and the latter was initially used in Psychology, but
nowadays the APA manual of style is the preferred one for papers in the fields of
Linguistics and Education and MLA is more recommended for publications
dealing with Literature. This first part of the unit will explore different ways to
format your essay before beginning to write and will show you how to cite and
reference your cited works with the help of the applications studied in unit 2.

Formatting your paper

When you begin to write your academic papers, the first thing to be done is
check which academic style needs to be followed. The example below
corresponds to the Atlantis journal guidelines, and it requires to use the Chicago
Manual of Style:
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 4
publishing industry

In case we do not find it the list of styles provided by our application (e.g.
Mendeley), we can install it:

You should also make sure that the language of your spelling checker is English
(or the language that is required). Take into account that different variations can
be selected as well. We have selected English (United Kingdom), but there
many others. The same happens with Spanish.

Besides, if you click on the number of words, you will be able to see the number
of characters and other information related.

MLA Style Modern Language Association

Apart from being a database to find our references related to Modern

Languages Studies, this organization publishes a book of style to guide academic
writing processes. The first edition dates from 1951, when William Riley Parker,
the executive director at that time, published “The MLA Style Sheet” with the aim
of serving as a guide to some of the journals related to the association (MLA
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 5
publishing industry

handbook, 2016, p. x). We will try to follow the 8th Edition (2016), which is the
latest one, although Mendeley is still using the 7th Edition. This is why you may
find slight differences among both versions. You can read here about the most
relevant changes: https://style.mla.org/whats-new/

Most of the publications related to Literature and Linguistics usually require

following the rules contained in the latest edition of the MLA Handbook for
Writers of Research Papers. In it, you will find recommendations dealing with
font size and type of text and quotes, margins, spacing, title, etc.

The following screenshot shows an example of the first page:

As you will find all the measures indicated in “inches”, it is important to remember
that 1 inch is 2.45 centimetres. Apart from this, in the MLA Book of Style and
other related handbooks you will find information about how to add graphics and
illustrations to your work, when to use capital letters, when to highlight a word, a
revision of the punctuation rules, etc.

You will find more information about how to format your essay here:

https://style.mla.org/formatting-papers/
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 6
publishing industry

APA (American Psychological Association)

This style is commonly used in the area of Applied Linguistics, Psycholinguistics

or Didactics, among other related fields. It is highly recommended to follow the
latest edition of the APA Book of style before beginning to write. You can find the
most relevant changes to the sixth edition in the following link:
http://www.apastyle.org/learn/tutorials/index.aspx If you visit this other link, you
will learn how to prepare your Word Processor to write following the APA
standard: https://nwtc.libanswers.com/faq/212877 .

This presentation will show you the most important updates of the 6th edition:
http://flash1r.apa.org/apastyle/whatsnew/index.htm?_ga=2.169091238.6003392
56.1513097954-362338919.1510924913 / It does not work with Chrome,
because it is Flash!! Most of the changes have with how to cite the new electronic
formats which have emerged in the last years.

The next screenshot shows an example of the first page of an essay

following APA guidelines:
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 7
publishing industry

Referencing articles, books and websites

You will need to incorporate a list of cited works (bibliography) at the end of
your essay, article or TFG. Before explaining how to create bibliographical lists
automatically with the help of the BMA introduced in unit 2, it is important to know
the elements of the main styles: MLA & APA.

Author: Surname, First name

Title of the source: The name of the work, which may be an article or a book
chapter. It can use quotation marks or italic fonts depending on the style followed.
Keywords are usually written in capital letters.

Title of the container: It is the journal or book where articles and chapters are
found.
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 8
publishing industry

Version: This field is applied mostly to literary works.

Number: It is reserved for journals. Volume/issue or some cases of books.

Publication date: It located at the end in the case of MLA.

Location: It refers to the exact pages in the case of articles or chapter books.
The way of indicating the page numbers varies depending on the source of
references and the chosen style.

Publisher: the company which publishes the book.

Editors: These appear in the case of books comprised of several

independent chapters written by different authors. The editors perform a labour
of supervision. They are not the authors of the book.

Date of access: It is sometimes compulsory to indicate this, when referencing

a website or some electronic source.

DOI: It is a unique alphanumeric string assigned by a registration agency

(the International DOI Foundation) to identify content and provide a persistent link
to its location on the Internet (APA, n.d.) .

One of the most visual features when formatting bibliographic references is the
“French indentation”, which means that the second lines stars after some spaces.

Book:

Buckingham, Louisa. Doing a Research Project in English Studies: A Guide for

Students. Oxford: Taylor and Francis, 2015. (MLA)

Buckingham, L. (2015). Doing a Research Project in English Studies: A Guide for

Students. Oxford: Taylor and Francis. (APA)

Book chapter:

Parkinson, Jean. “English for Science and Technology.” The Handbook of English for
Specific Purposes. Ed. Sue Starfield and Brian Partridge. Somerset, NJ, USA:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. 177–196. (MLA)

Parkinson, J. (2012). English for Science and Technology. In S. Starfield & B. Paltridge
(Eds.), The Handbook of English for Specific Purposes (pp. 177–196). Somerset,
NJ, USA: Wiley-Blackwell. (APA)

Article:
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 9
publishing industry

Durán-Escribano, Pilar, and Georgina Cuadrado-Esclapez. “Constitutive Metaphor and

Mental Mappings: Meaning Construction in the Language of Science and
Technology.” Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos 23.1 (2017): 83–107.
(MLA)

Durán-Escribano, P., & Cuadrado-Esclapez, G. (2017). Constitutive metaphor and

mental mappings: meaning construction in the language of science and technology.
Revista de Lenguas Para Fines Específicos, 23(1), 83–107. (APA)

Website:

McAdoo, Timothy. “APA Style Blog: References versus Citations.” American

Philological Association. N.p., 2017. Accessed 12 December 2017. (MLA)

McAdoo, T. (2017). APA Style Blog: References versus Citations. Retrieved from
http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/text-citation/ (APA)

Using BMAs to quote and create bibliographic lists of references

Now that you know how to compile references and we already have our
folder of references ready to be used, it is time to learn how to insert them in our
text (e.g. TFG) and how to generate a list of references automatically using one
of these styles.

In-text citations

When you start working on the State of Art/background section of your TFG, you
will need to read some articles to be able to justify your topic theoretically. You
will have to quote some authors, and each style has different guidelines for this.
These in-text citations can be retrieved from a journal, book, or even a website.
In any case, you must know how to cite conveniently, either with APA (McAdoo,
2017) 1 or MLA (“In-text citations – The MLA Style Center,” n.d.) 2.

If you are using RefWorks, you will need to download and install a tool called
“Write-N-Cite”, but, be careful, because not all the OS versions support it. This
link provides a list: https://refworks.proquest.com/tools/ffw/ Although its use with
RefWorks Legacy was quite straightforward, Flow version information detailed is
not so clear, at least for the newest versions of Microsoft Word. On the other
hand, the new RefWorks allows inserting in-text cites even from Google Docs if
you previously include an extension as an add-on feature.

1
Lee, C.APA Style Blog: In-text citations. Retrieved from http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/text-citation/
2
In-text citations – The MLA Style Center. Retrieved from https://style.mla.org/tag/in-text-citations/
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 10
publishing industry

Once installed, you will need to click again on “adds-on” and choose “RefWorks
Flow”. This video will give you detailed instructions of all the steps to follow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxpFR4cw7fA . It is important to know that
this feature only works with documents created with Google Docs, which means
that if you open a Microsoft Document with Google Docs you will not see the
option to insert references.

Mendeley users will need to install and open the desktop version. Once
there, go to “Tools” --- MS Installer ---. Given that this complement will be installed
in Microsoft Word, you will need to close it in the case it is open. Once in MS
Word, go to “References”, choose the style that you need, and insert all the in-
text citations required.

Generating a reference list

In the case of RefWorks, there are two options:

1. Using Write-N-Cite. Once you have finished drafting the document, a list
of cited reference will be automatically generated with all the in-text
citations found in it. This is the best way to make sure that all the
references have been included in the list (remember that the RefWorks
version presents some difficulties to be used but you can watch this video
too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um5oOxJjXAk ).

2. Through the RefWorks website. Just select the folder you would like to
convert into a list of references, choose the style (MLA or APA) and do it.
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 11
publishing industry

You can choose whether to visualise your list on the screen, as HTML or
request for it to be sent to your email account. This is the best way to share
lists of references with other people who do not have RefWorks.

Mendeley does not offer the possibility of generating reference lists from a
folder so you must create within the word processor. Once you have inserted all
the citations, then, click on bibliography and follow the instructions on the
screen. Go to View-Citation style – and choose the desired style.

Activity 5.1. Adding bibliographic references to your essays

Use your RefWorks account to create a list of references from one of your folders.
You can include selected references or all of them. Remember to revise that they
follow the accurate format before finishing. You can copy and paste that list or
send it as an attachment (You can do some practice with Write-N-Cite if you wish
but remember that the macro is not as stable as one available for the previous
version).

Use Mendeley to insert some in-text citations within a paragraph or more. You
can add more than one author in the same cite. Remember that erase the name
of the author if you do not need it.

Share your experience in the forum and do not forget to ask any doubt or
problem you may have with this.

You can also copy and paste ‘formatted text’ of single references for quick
insertions.

++If you wish to learn more about the different between “references” and “in-text
citations”, you can read this post: McAdoo, T. (2017). APA Style Blog:
References versus Citations. Retrieved from
https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2017/09/references-versus-citations.html (APA)
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 12
publishing industry

Periodical publications for the General Public

If the invention of the print by Guttenberg meant a significant change in the

history of book publications, the Internet has brought the chance to publish in a
quick and more economical way. Nowadays, we can create our own newspaper
for free or even set up a new scientific journal in a short period of time. The tools
that we will look at in this section have been divided into two blocks depending
on their aims: general topics and academic purposes.

Publications on general topics (Newspapers, Magazines, etc.)

Thanks to the Internet, publishing your own magazine is possible. Most of

the tools require paying a license, but we can try some demos to see how they
work. We will explore two methods: the easiest way, by curating its contents
(mostly free) and those based on pagination.

Publications created through curation methods

Curation is one of the easiest ways to publish the latest news without any
effort. The Cambridge dictionary defines “curation” as the verb used to “to select
things such as documents, music, products, or Internet content to be included as
part of a list or collection, or on a website”. They are conceived as very simple
way of online publishing and became very successful with the emergence of
syndication and microblogging.

Scoop.it

It is a very similar tool to Paper.li. It was launched some years ago, with a
free option and a more sophisticated one that involves a fee. Again, you can log
in using your Facebook or Twitter account or by creating a new Scoop account.
It works similarly to Twitter, by the re-scooping news that you may consider of
interest for you and your followers or people that may read your publications.
They affirm to be the largest and most connected curation publishing platform for
professionals by With Scoop.it Business by publishing content in your website,
social channels, and newsletters in just a few clicks.
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 13
publishing industry

Once you have your account ready, you can opt just for reading contents from
other websites or create your own topic. When adding content to your topic, you
will see icons to publish on Google +, Facebook or LinkedIn, at the same time.

It looks like a never-ending board where you can link URLs or show contents from
other scoop.it topics. This is the URL of the scoop.it created for this subject.
https://www.scoop.it/t/digital-competence-english-studies

Paper.li

Although this tool is more focused on business and finances, we can also take
advantage of its free version to create and maintain our own digital publication
based on feeds and Twitter to display content. This version does not permit any
changes. For example, you cannot add or remove headlines of your newspaper,
or include new topics, but you will find different ones for each day. This is the
URL of the publication created for this subject:
https://paper.li/apps_tic_ei/1350379343#/
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 14
publishing industry

As you can see, you can share all the elements of the site easily through
different social networks.

Activity 5.2 Online publishing based on curation (Optional)

Open an account at Scoop.it or Paper.li. Remember that you can log in using
your Twitter or Facebook account. Do not forget to share your experience in the
forum.

You can read about how to get started with Paper.li here
https://blog.paper.li/2020/02/04/getting-started-with-paper-li-pro/ or watch this
video about Scoop.it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKcUUrWK_JY if that
is the one you choose.

** You can also explore both sites without having to create any new account if
you think you are not going to use this tool in the future.

Publications based on pagination

Creating online Magazines from scratch is perhaps a more difficult task to do
considering the tools that are currently available. These have been conceived for
more professional aims and in most cases are more expensive too. Below you
can find some examples:
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 15
publishing industry

 E-page Creator 3

It is an HTML-based tool used to create unlimited digital publications from

PDF, SWF and image files. You will have different options depending on the fee
that you have paid. The magazine shown below has the following features: Share,
Print, Save as PDF, Background Color, Save as PDF and Thumbnail View.

The same company is offering other products to create e-books and apps
for Android and IOS for mobiles.

3DIssue

It is professional proprietary software, used by most powerful companies in

the world to create Flash & HTML5 magazines and e-books among many other
features. In the same way as e-page creator, it can adapt its final product to be
read by tablets, smartphones, and other mobile devices. As usual, you can
download a demo to test it. You will find a tutorial here showing how it works. One
of its latest features is the possibility of creating e-books as well:
http://www.3dissue.com/#

3
http://www.epagecreator.net/index.html
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 16
publishing industry

3D issue sample created by Google company 4

Software developed for Academic /Scientific journals and

conference management
They are not as widely accessible as the previous examples because they
been designed to be used by professional associations, universities and other
institutions. They permit to help its users with the process of submission and
edition with the predation of different profiles based on permissions given to do
different kinds of tasks depending on the roles needed for each user. They are
also used to improve the peer-review process of abstracts’ submission
processes.

Probably most of the publications that you are reading either for this
subject or the TFG have been created with some of the tools introduced in this
section.

Public Knowledge Project (PKP)5

“PKP is a multi-university initiative developing (free) open-source software
and conducting research to improve the quality and reach of scholarly publishing”.
One of its most widely-known products is Open Journal System (OJS), one of the
most widely used software for periodical publications. Some examples can be
found here:

• RIED http://revistas.uned.es/index.php/ried

https://www.3dissue.com/samples.html
4
5
https://pkp.sfu.ca/
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 17
publishing industry

• International Journal of Applied Linguistics & Literature

http://www.journals.aiac.org.au/index.php/IJALEL

• EPOS: Revista de Filología http://revistas.uned.es/index.php/EPOS

• Open Conference System (OMP), which permits manage the conference

flow of proposals to review and publish proceedings. Some examples are:

• Language Science Press http://langsci-press.org/

• Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press

https://opensi.si.edu/index.php/smithsonian

Other products are: Open Monograph Press (to publish books) and Open
Harvester System (to index resources)

Open Edition Journals (former Revues.org)

OpenEdition is a portal of open electronic resources about Humanities and
Social Sciences. It contains products like Open Edition Books, Hypothèses
(academic blogs in Spanish French and German language), Calenda (to add and
receive alerts about academic and scientific events in French) or OpenEdition
Freemium.

Find below some examples related to English Studies:

• Review du Linguistique et de Didactique des Langues

http://lidil.revues.org/

• Apprentissage des langues et systèmes d'information et de

communication http://alsic.revues.org/

• Acquisition et d’interaction en langue étrangère http://aile.revues.org/

• Corpus http://corpus.revues.org/

As for Open Edition Books, this is the appearance of an online book ready to read
on-screen.

https://books.openedition.org/pur/30504
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 18
publishing industry

Apart from the tools and platforms mentioned above, we can find other not so
well-known resources to create journals here:

https://library.queensu.ca/help-services/publishing-support/making-your-
publications-open-access

Creating a book/ e-book

Tools to create e-books are similar or even the same to the ones intended
to create e-magazines. There are platforms such as Lulu 6, which even help you
to send the book edited by yourself. Some others, like Storybird 7, can help you
create an interactive book to be used and shared in a classroom:

http://www.lulu.com/gb/
6

https://storybird.com/
7
Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 19
publishing industry
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 20
publishing industry

Other tools such as Calibre 8 simply convert a pdf file into an e-book format. It is
“open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-
books for users of e-books”.

To finish this unit, we will mention two mail proprietary software programs
in the publishing industry:

QuarkExpress 2018

It is one of the leading applications in the publishing industry to create any

kind of books in different formats (printed and online versions). We are not going
to try it in this course, but it is important to know of their existence. Some of its
features can be seen in the following video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7nj6qyTGLw :

http://calibre-ebook.com/
8
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 21
publishing industry

Adobe InDesignCC

It is a solution offered by Adobe suite which is very similar to QuarkXpress,

but it has been thought to produce material for electronic devices. Wikipedia
offers a complete article on the evolution of this program 9. It is being used
nowadays in the field of Digital Humanities, in order to enrich texts with additional
information and notes. Its appearance is very similar to other applications of the
same suite:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_InDesign
9
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 22
publishing industry

Internet accessibility and mobility

Accessibility can be described in two ways:

- An online document or tool is accessible when it can be easily

understood by everyone, regardless of what browser or adaptive
equipment he or she is using.

- Any document or tool can be accessed by any user regardless of the

device (e.g. visual browser, screen reader, mobile device) he or she is
using.

The amount of information spread on the web is growing day by day

exponentially. There are even some documents that have opted for being
published just in their online version. This fact has made official organisations
enable a minimum of accessibility in the websites they create. There are different
levels of accessibility:

Read the following website create to navigate on the BBC pages:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/

Apple made a compromise with accessibility. That could be one of the main
reasons not to show Flash websites since this application is not easily convertible
to voice with the program that people impaired vision frequently use, called
Jaws 10.

This site introduces some of the most basic rules to make websites accessible
https://www.w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/accessibility-intro/ Mobile sites can also
be tested. However, apart from accessible, a website must be organised in such
a way that information can be found easily. This is called “usability”. Read the
following information to know more about this topic: http://www.usability.gov/

Usability is described by the ISO (International Organization for Standarization)

as "The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve
specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified
context of use."

Companies like Apple seem to be involved in matters of accessibility with pages

like this: https://www.apple.com/accessibility/ . Also, Google has devoted some
resources to this matter:
https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/accessibility/

http://www.freedomscientific.com/products/fs/jaws-product-page.asp
10
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 23
publishing industry

Activity 5.3 Accessibility and usability

Check the accessibility of some websites of your interest at

https://www.tawdis.net/?lang=en .

Try to find information related to accessibility and the use of mobile devices.
Share your findings in the forum.

You can also visit Google (https://www.google.com/accessibility/) and Apple

websites (https://www.apple.com/accessibility/) and read about what they offer in
terms of accessibility.

As for UNED, you may have realised that from this academic year, its web page
is using a text to speech tool named ReadSpeaker webReader
https://www.readspeaker.com/solutions/text-to-speech-online/readspeaker-
webreader/

To learn more about this topic

- Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/WAI/

- Accessibility and Usability at Penn State http://accessibility.psu.edu/

- II Seminario del Grupo de Innovación Educativa ARENA (Accesibilidad,

Traducción audiovisual y aprendizaje de lenguas)
https://canal.uned.es/series/5d773e01a3eeb0a97e8b4569

- If you want learn more about what is done at UNED about accessibility,
you can visit this site
https://portal.uned.es/portal/page?_pageid=93,171803&_dad=portal&_sc
hema=PORTAL

Final work / PEC

Remember to use the template found in the virtual course to submit your work.
 Unit 5. Revision of software applications: Research and 24
publishing industry

Final questions

- Was this unit useful for you? Did it seem difficult?

- What do you think about the tools used to create your own publications?
Have you tried any of them?

- Do you think you will try to take into account accessibility and usability
standards in your professional life?