Spanish Mirror Site Launched

American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS)
1444 I (Eye) Street NW, Suite 200
Washington, DC 20005
Phone: (202) 628-1500
http://www.aibs.org/

For Immediate Release: 26 August 2009

For more information, contact:
ActionBioscience.org
(English) https://scienceinstyle.com/
(Spanish) https://scienceinstyle.com/esp/
editor@actionbioscience.org

ActionBioscience.org expands its resources for Hispanic visitors and students

Washington, DC.— ActionBioscience.org is an award-winning educational website—with both English and Spanish-language content—of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS), a nonprofit scientific association dedicated to advancing biological research and education for the welfare of society. The site is supported by a subaward of a National Science Foundation grant given to expand BiosciEdNet (BEN), the bioscience education digital library, and it is endorsed by the National Association of Biology Teachers.

ActionBioscience.org conducted an online survey for Spanish visitors in 2004 to learn more about the site’s visitors, to gauge their satisfaction with content and usability, and to obtain preferences for future website articles. In 2004, the Spanish-language survey participants indicated:

• Educators (29%), students (25%), general public (21%), and professional scientists (17%) visited the site.
• The vast majority of respondents (92%) said that they find the articles of interest and very or somewhat easy to read (92%).
• Most would like to see a completely Hispanic version of ActionBioscience.org (96%), with more articles by Hispanic authors (92%).

Based on these survey responses and on additional visitors’ feedback, ActionBioscience.org has launched a Hispanic mirror site this month, https://scienceinstyle.com/esp/. The site has global reach, with visitors from 175 countries in a typical year, which includes 42% from the U.S. and 72% from the Americas as a whole. The website’s tracking service shows that the number of Hispanic visitors has been increasing every year. In 2008, the greatest number of page views outside the U.S. came from Mexico.

For U.S. residents, the Spanish version of the site is particularly useful for those whose first language is not English. Educators in the United States are encouraged to assign ActionBioscience.org Spanish articles to their students of Hispanic origin. Those students may improve their scientific literacy skills, especially if they experience difficulty reading scientific information in English. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), “One of the challenges currently facing schools is providing equal educational opportunities to students from various cultural backgrounds, some of whom are not proficient in English.”

A new visitor survey is available on Hispanic ActionBioscience.org to determine the visitors’ reaction to the new features. Users can access the survey from the Spanish website’s home page or directly at https://scienceinstyle.com/esp/encuesta.html.