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This multinational authored article presents the findings and recommendations of a three-year, European-funded project 'OpenMed: Opening up education in South Mediterranean countries', which brought together five higher education partners from Europe and nine from the South Mediterranean region. This was the first cross-European initiative to promote the adoption of Open Educational Practices (OEP) within higher education involving educational institutions in each of the countries. A three-phase project design included gathering and analyzing case studies of OEPs globally, and, in particular, in the South Mediterranean; the organization of regional forums to encourage priorities for change; and the multi-national design and pilot implementation of a 'training of trainers' course for academic capacity building in OEPs as part of curricula reform. We will discuss how the cultural approaches used among experts and project partners with different national, linguistic, and educational backgrounds have instigated change in policy and practice at a personal, institutional, and national level.

This paper summarises part of our work concerning social support networks among immigrants. It combines a compilation of some of our most significant findings with the formulation of hypothetical arguments that are based on previous evidence. We shall develop three main points: first, we shall briefly present the concept of social support; second, we shall review—with immigrant populations—some dimensions of this concept, such as the multiplicity of providers, help exchanges, and the collective context of migration chains; finally, we shall propose a classification of the types of support chains involving immigrants with less than ten years of residence in Spain.

The new organizational structure of the Journal and the main guidelines for future are described in this Editorial.

The Matrix trilogy offers a powerful metaphor about the man-machine convergence. This duality is efficiently represented by the the internet search engines (as Matrix centinels) and the social software applications. Both of them use widely the network representation of data. Departing from the Social Network Analysis as a theoretical and methodological framework this paper explores the ways in which the (a) standardization of visual methods of representation, (b) community mapping, (c) global personal networks, (d) strategies for network navigation and (e) network change monitorization could be improved.

El análisis de redes sociales ha prosperado de forma extraordinaria en el mundo Iberoamericano en los últimos años. En esta contribución se describe un estado del desarrollo de los estudios empíricos actuales, se presenta un grupo destacado de contribuciones a la IV Mesa Hispana en Portorož y se propone una agenda de investigación en torno a la discusión del concepto de mesoestructura, como alternativa para el estudio de una variedad de temas sustantivos y como un enfoque que permite avanzar en el desarrollo de la teoría social.

Elaboramos una tipología de redes de apoyo en un colectivo de inmigrantes marroquíes (n=81), filipinos (n=69) y senegaleses (n=23) residentes en Marbella, aplicando la entrevista Mannheim de apoyo social (MISS) (Veiel, 1990, 1993). Primero realizamos tres análisis de conglomerados exploratorios utilizando como variables-criterio indicadores de (1) composición familiar y étnica, (2) funciones de apoyo, y (3) tamaño y estructura de la red. Los análisis de chi-cuadrado entre las tres clasificaciones revelaron la solución de cinco clusters como la más apropiada. Para elaborar una tipología global con cinco categorías, seleccionamos siete indicadores de la red de apoyo, tomando en consideración para elegir cada variable: la diferenciación entre clusters, la saturación en una solución factorial y la matriz de correlaciones. Las variables-criterio seleccionadas fueron: disponibilidad de apoyo cotidiano psicológico, disponibilidad de apoyo instrumental en situaciones de crisis, número de compatriotas en la red de apoyo, número de españoles en la red de apoyo, número de familiares en la red de apoyo, número de no-familiares en la red de apoyo, y multiplicidad media de los vínculos. Los cinco clusters resultantes fueron (1) redes pequeñas de amigos y familiares compatriotas, (2) redes étnicas con predominio de vínculos especializados, (3) redes sinérgicas con predominio de amigos compatriotas, (4) redes étnicas de reagrupamiento familiar, y (5) redes de reagrupamiento familiar integradas en la comunidad receptora. Los tres colectivos estudiados tienen un perfil claramente diferenciado en sus redes personales: el 60% de los marroquíes se ubica en la categoría de redes más pequeñas, y el 60% de los senegaleses pertenece a grupos de compatriotas polivalentes. Por último, la tipología distingue significativamente los niveles de bienestar psicológico y el grado de utilización de servicios sociales. Los inmigrantes con redes pequeñas obtienen las puntuaciones más altas en la escala de depresión del Center for Epidemiological Studies (CES-D) (Radloff, 1977), mientras que las redes de reagrupamiento (étnicas o mixtas) se asocian significativamente a una mayor utilización de servicios sociales.

Participants in massive open online courses show a wide variety of motivations. This has been studied with the elaboration of classifications of the users according to their behavior throughout the course. In this study, we aimed to classify the participants in the MOOCs according to the initial motivations and intentions, before long interaction with the online device. Using a survey of 1768 participants in 6 MOOCs, we classify the participants according to: internal motives, external motives and intention of persistence. Three profiles of involvement in the course were identified: poorly motivated (16.7%), self referential (28.8%) and highly committed (54.5%). All three profiles showed significant differences in self-reported learning experiences at the end of the course. The intensity of the initial motivation was positively related to the satisfaction and perceived quality of the training experience. According to our analysis, identifying motivational profiles before starting the course allows to diagnose in advance the educational use and the diversity of individual training itineraries.