The web trail – Using cybermetrics to build reputation

By Enrique Orduña-Malea. In the inaugural lecture of the international conference “Transparency versus Rankings”, held last month at the Polytechnic University of Valencia and led by Francisco Marmolejo, education programme coordinator at the World Bank, two approaches to the future of higher education were presented. One involved various macro-level factors (especially economic and demographic ones) and the other considered the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on higher education, both internally (infrastructure and services) and externally (affecting institutional relations and visibility) – issues that are discussed extensively in the current literature. But one critical aspect not often talked about is that the use of ICT by universities – in addition to changing their structure, how they function or the services they offer – generates a trail that can be quantified and evaluated, which provides complementary information of indisputable value and which, given its size and global sweep, should not be overlooked in any university information system, whether it is able to be evaluated or not. Read more...