2.2.1. PrUnAs

The computer program PrUnAs (Preferences Unobtrusive Assessment) [87] displays 28 titled images concerning different subjects, as is shown in Figure 1.

Main screen of PrUnAs application. From left to right, in rows, the titles in English are: The electric car; Catalan economy in the nineteenth century; Chemical elements; Volcanoes; The infinity; Infectious diseases; Non-formal education; Cubist art; Artificial intelligence; Wind instruments; Seven tourist destinations; Human rights in the twentieth century; Olympic games in Seoul; Gothic buildings; Poets from the 27th; Western cinema; The Red Cross; Colour TV; D-day; Security corps; Reproduction of lions; The sun at North Cape; Romanic languages; Elections at the USA; Newton’s laws; Rationalism in Philosophy; Human memory; Photosynthesis.

The topics represent the fields of knowledge of pure sciences, health sciences, social sciences, applied social sciences, arts and humanities, and engineering. Most of them can be linked to different majors within each field as well as to different professional-oriented studies. For instance, the topic of electric cars can be appealing both for students aimed to engineering and those that will follow professional studies on automotive mechanics or on electricity. All texts were written in Catalan, which is the vehicular language for compulsory studies in Barcelona region.

Each topic linked to a new screen where the image was enlarged, and a sentence-long description was made (15 words); a further link was provided to display a new screen where links to three different images (thumbnails) and a link to a summary (200 words) were available. Users were free to start with any of the three thumbnails or with the summary page.

On the summary page, links to a longer text (500 words) and the three former non-textual representations—an image, a concept-map, and a numerical-graphical chart—were also available. An example of this page is depicted in Figure 2.

The abstract’s page. Hyperlinks to further text (yellow button) and non-textual information sources (thumbnails on the left side) are available. The top-left button is present in all pages and permits users to go back to the previously explored pages. It can also be seen that the main page is blurred underneath. The time remaining is displayed on the top. The text in English is: The word photosynthesis comes from the Greek “photo”—light—and “synthesis”—composition—and takes place in plants, algae, and some bacteria, though not in archeobacteria. The organisms that have photosynthesis are also called “photoautotrophs”. However, not all organisms that use light as a source of energy have photosynthesis, because the “photoheterotrophs” use organic compounds, instead of carbon dioxide, as the carbon source. Among plants, algae, and cyanobacteria photosynthesis uses carbon dioxide and water, and it releases oxygen as a residual. Hence, photosynthesis is central for life in the Earth, both to preserve the atmospheric normal level of oxygen, and many forms of life that depend on photosynthesis to gather energy are what many other species feed on. The amount of energy captured by photosynthesis is huge—some 100 Terawatts—approximately six times the energy consumed yearly by human civilisation. Furthermore, photosynthetic organisms fix 100,000 million tons of carbon into biomass each year. Despite it can take place in different forms, depending on the species, some of its traits are steady and regular.

The information was organised in hyperlinks, always providing the possibility to go back until the main page. Although it was a local, executable application (to have a strict control of time and key- or mouse-strokes) its functionality corresponded to that of a website. The participants were free to navigate within the topics or between them at their will. The overall time of the task was limited to 20 min.