Abstract:

This research describes and analyses an innovative technological approach in research and teaching. This inter-university project carried out by the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona), Universidad Carlos III (Madrid), Universidad de Navarra (Pamplona), Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (Barcelona) has studied the population of 43 towns from the parish records for the “Camp de Tarragona” in Catalonia (Spain). In order to analyze this extensive data it was entered into a database (Microsoft Office Access), which allowed us to work with the information and obtain results in form of statistics, reports, calculations and graphs. Since the researchers are from various universities and this is a multidisciplinary project involving historians, demographers and geographers, a website is being created, with the assistance of CU Villanueva (UCM), to enable the project members to work from their respective locations.

The aim of the web service is to facilitate research. Therefore, it is necessary to provide good communication and exchange of information among researchers who work on different projects. The web service will facilitate access to the database, as well as entering new data. It will be intuitive and visual. Additionally, it will allow to obtain graphs according to diverse parameters: town, years, age, etc. It will be available online as any other website such as Socrative, Learning Catalytic and Polls Everywhere. It could also be used as a teaching tool since real-time information could be analyzed by students in any classroom with access to the Internet. It will enhance their learning and promote motivation. For our study, the web service will be complemented by the presentation program named Prezi and the smart student response system called Socrative. We will also present an infographic poster with reports and graphs created in Microsoft Access.

After completing our database, it will be available to outside researchers so that they can access and download the database and conduct further studies. Likewise, the data will be published at a later date on a public website so that a greater number of people interested in the subject may have access to the results. This service will allow the data to be retrieved but not modified.

Keywords:

Innovation technologies, population, database, web service, research, teaching.