Julio Meneses

Biography

My scientific career started in 2000 at the Universidad de Oviedo, where I had the opportunity to become part of the Research Methods Section as a student in training at the Department of Psychology, earned an undergraduate scholarship from the Spanish Ministry of Education, and conducted my practicum in Social Psychology Research. After obtaining a BA in Psychology I was hired as a researcher assistant at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) and moved to Barcelona, where I was involved in my first R&D project, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology, and earned a PhD Scholarship from the Generalitat de Catalunya that allowed me to start my Doctorate courses at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

After this early experience as a research assistant, I became researcher of the “Projecte Internet Catalunya”, directed by Professor Manuel Castells, obtained my MPhil in Information and Knowledge Society, and then earned the Diploma of Advanced Studies in 2006. During this period, I had the opportunity to be trained and learn about quantitative research design and I became a specialist in survey design, sampling, data collection, and multivariate analysis of data. In 2007, I joined the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at the UOC as a full-time professor of research methods, teaching in different graduate and post-graduate programs and leading a PhD research seminar for the Doctoral School. Currently, I am also the head of the Learning Analytics Unit of the eLearn Center (eLC), aimed to support evidence based decision-making and strategic planning of the University with a particular focus on first-year students’ retention and success.

In 2015, I obtained my PhD in Information and Knowledge Society, defending a thesis by publication that included papers published in international indexed journals (Q1 and Q2) between 2010 and 2014. Currently, I am member of the Gender and ICT (2017SGR-627) group of the IN3, where I take the role of expert in quantitative research methods and contribute supervising study designs and multivariate analysis of the data collected. Also, I have collaborated with other research teams in the field of social sciences (SINTE: UAB, UOC, URL, and UDG; EDO: UAB; LAIKA, GAME, CareNet, and Feed2Learn: UOC), working in different R&D projects and contracts based on surveys.

As a result of this research, I have contributed to several communications presented at international conferences such as the European Conference on Educational Research, the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, the European Congress of Psychology, and the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. In addition, I have also published several research reports, books, and papers in international journals such as Psicothema, Computers in Human Behavior, The Information Society, Higher Education, School Effectiveness and School Improvement, Computers & Education, Higher Education Research & Development, Sex Roles, International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology, British Journal of Educational Technology, Journal of Mixed Methods Research, Comunicar, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, International Journal of Social Psychology, PLoS ONE, Behavior Research Methods, and European Journal of Special Needs Education.