Dr. Hou Yung-chi, Associate Professor, a researcher of Center for Learning and Teaching, recently completed a report on the status of Taiwan universities in “Webometrics Rankings of World Universities” (WRWU), produced by the Laboratorio de Internet, Centre for Scientific Information and Documentation, a unit of the Spanish National Research Council. Dr. Hou’s report was commissioned by Founder Clement Chang, for the administrative references of TKU President, Vice Presidents, and other top rank administrators. Dr. Hou points out that visibility is the most crucial element in the ranking system, and he suggests that in order to reach the aim at being among World top 300 universities in WRWU the school have to establish an administrative unit to organize resources in digitalizing school information.

The Laboratorio de Internet announces the result of WRWU respectively in January and July every year. Tamkang University is the only Taiwan private university ranked among the top 500. Dr. Hou observes that “TKU’s decrease in visibility in the recent years has directly influence its ranking status.” In his report, he raises four suggestions for the school to reach the goal within three to five years: “English translation of webpages,” “updating webpages regularly,” “integrating Library and Information Processing Center as a unified platform,” “developing digital collections.”

Dr. Hou reports that within the recent three years, TKU’s best performance was No. 351, and the major reasons are the increase in visibility and the amount of webpages. The visibility could be monitored by the records of research achievement, special curricular activities, speeches by prominent scholars, important international conferences. To render the webpages by international languages would attract more readers in the world.

In response to the report, related administrative offices started to work out specific measures. Office of the Secretariat has announced a standard format for school webpages according to the criteria of WRWU, and asks every first rank office to monitor every department and unit to update webpages by August 2. The improvement of school webpages are commissioned to Dr. Hsu Ting-chi, Secretary General of Office of the Secretariat, who will coordinate Office of International Exchanges and International Education, Admissions Section of Office of Academic Affairs, and Digital Design Section of Information Processing Center to do the job.

Dr. Huang Ming-da, Director of Information Processing Center, indicates that the Center has used Dept. of Japanese as example to demonstrate the basic structure of a department website. In addition to the introduction to the department, there will be searching sections (publication, curriculum, student name lists), and interactive sections (homework and assignment, course list, and “Student Learning Records”). The diversity of content is expected to attract more visitors and benefit both teachers and students to monitor the learning process. The Center also sets up “Webpage Services Team” to assist every department, and will hold a webpage contest in June 2011.

TKU Library is actively promoting “Digital Collections,” in which the publication and works of teachers, staffs, and students will be digitalized to be shared with local and international readers via internet. This will help to demonstrate the school’s total result of researches. Dr. Huang Ming-da emphasizes that the updating of webpages of every department and unit as well as the completion of “Digital Collections” system will increase the reading count, which is the crucial reference of “visibility” in WRWU, and easily help the school to reach among World top 300 universities in WRWU. ( ~Chen Chi-szu )