DESCRIPTION OF THE WEB TOOL FOR GENERATING PERSONALIZED

3.2. DESCRIPTION OF THE WEB TOOL

When each of the three questions are selected, another box appears in which the user has to choose, respectively:

• The bachelor’s degree or degrees they wish to study

• The region where they would like to study

• The importance they give to teaching and research and innovation.

The user can choose either one or several options in the first two questions (one or several degrees; one, several or all of the autonomous communities).

To avoid having to make the choice among the thousands of different bachelor’s degrees offered by Spanish universities, the first selection window shows 3,493 degrees offered by 72 universities analyzed and grouped into 26 families of degrees.

When one of these areas is clicked, a drop-down list is displayed showing the bachelor’s degrees it contains. Thus, for example, when “Civil Engineering and Architecture” is selected the bachelor’s degrees included in this family of degrees are displayed.

The names of the degrees that appear in the drop-down list are not exhaustive or literal either, as those bachelor’s degrees with very similar names have been grouped, as for example

“Humanities” and “Humanities and social studies”

have been grouped under the name “Humanities Degrees”. Therefore, the more than 3,493 bachelor’s degrees available have been reduced to 122 to make the user’s decision easier.

However, regardless of this initial reduction, the final results show the complete title of the degree, as well as the center where it is taught in case there are various options.

The second step is to choose the autonomous community or regions considered as places in which to study. Thus, the user must mark those chosen on the following table, one of the options being “Any region”. The option of restricting the search to specific autonomous communities is a response to the fact that many students do not contemplate the idea of moving as an alternative or a restriction. In this case, their interest will be to know which of the studies offered are valued best in the territories that the student is considering. In any way, complementary information is offered to position their options in relation to the remaining offers in the Spanish University System.

Thirdly, the user must declare their preference regarding the importance they give to study and research when valuing the universities’ profiles, by distributing the 100 points available to the importance they grant to teaching and to research.

As the user selects the degrees and regions of choice and distributes the 100 points among the two dimensions in such a way as to reflect their preferences, those decisions are registered in the boxes below. Once the information is introduced in the three fields, they can select the “Create your own ranking” icon that appears on screen.

When this button is selected, the personalized ranking corresponding to the criteria introduced is displayed placing in order the universities that offer the bachelor’s degrees of their choice in the pre-selected territories according to their preference. The user is also informed that there are other options in addition to those selected in the same family of degrees, in case it is of their interest. This more complete set of alternatives is offered in a pdf file.

The first column shows the position of each degree considered in the personalized ranking.

The second shows the value of the index reached for each specific degree. As we observe in the example, various bachelor’s degrees can occupy the same position in the ranking, since the indices are rounded to one decimal point because greater precision is not considered to reflect, more accurately, differences among the degrees.

Next to the names of the bachelor’s degrees appears a link to the webpage of each university.

In addition, the cut-off mark of the last year, the price per credit on first registration, and information on the centers which impart the degree. The last columns on the right show the information on graduate employability which will be described in the next section.

Table 3.1 shows the level of disaggregation of each of the indicators included in the calculation of the personalized ranking of degrees¹⁵. These indicators are the same twenty as those used to calculate the rankings by institutions. The

15 The dimensions, areas, and indicators used, as well as the definition of the indicators, sources, and period coincide with what is described in Annex 1 (overall ranking). As shown in the table, the only variation is in the column of level of disaggregation.

sources and the years used are also the same;

however, the level of disaggregation varies.

While the indicators in the general ranking are collected at area of study or university level, more disaggregated information is used for the personalized ranking when available. Thus, 9 of the 20 indicators involved in the calculation of the synthetic index of each degree are analyzed at the level of degree or group of degrees. It should be noted that the only difference with regards to the methodology of the general ranking is that the standardization of the indicators of the personalized ranking of degrees is done by groups of degrees, not by area of study. In other words, the reference group for each degree would be the one that belongs to the same family of degrees and therefore, it is the median value of this family that is used for the standardization.

To sum up, the web tool for constructing personalized rankings is easy to use, very flexible, and is underpinned by a rigorous methodology identical to the one described in previous sections on how general rankings are constructed. Therefore, it is a complement to the latter with a high potential for students, families and careers counselors, as well as for universities themselves. The more than 185,000 personalized rankings that have been calculated testify to the level of interest in the tool. For this interest in the tool to be effective, it is essential to keep all the supporting information up-to-date and to constantly improve the data offered, taking the users’ experience into account. Revisions and improvements are currently underway and that is why this edition includes complementary information on graduate employability.