Do optional activities matter in virtual learning environments?

Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) provide students with activi-ties to improve their learning (e.g., reading texts, watching videos or solving exercises). But VLEs usually also provide optional activities (e.g., changing an avatar profile or setting goals). Some of these have a connection with the learn-ing process, but are not directly devoted to learning concepts (e.g., setting goals). Few works have dealt with the use of optional activities and the relation-ships between these activities and other metrics in VLEs. This paper analyzes the use of optional activities at different levels in a specific case study with 291 students from three courses (physics, chemistry and mathematics) using the Khan Academy platform. The level of use of the different types of optional ac-tivities is analyzed and compared to that of learning activities. In addition, the relationship between the usage of optional activities and different student be-haviors and learning metrics is presented

Description of the vitis vinifera L. Phenotypic variability in eno-carpological traits by a Euro-Asiatic collaborative network among ampelographic collections

The grapevine intra-specific variability captured an increasing interest during the last decades, as demonstrated by the number of recently funded European projects focused on the grapevine biodiversity preservation. However, nowadays, crop plants are mainly characterized by genotyping methods. The present work summarizes the phenotype data collected among 20 ampelographic collections spread over 15 countries, covering most of the viticultural areas in the Euro-Asiatic region: from Portugal to Armenia and from Cyprus to Luxembourg. Together with agro-climatic characterization of the experimental site, over two years about 2,400 accessions were described. A common experimental protocol mainly focused on the carpological and oe-nological traits was followed, obtaining a general overview of the distribution of the considered phenotypic traits in the cultivated Vitis vinifera species. The most replicated cultivars were selected and, for the subset of these reference cultivars, their behavior in the different environmental conditions over sites and years was described by ANOVA methods

Do optional activities matter in virtual learning environments?

Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) provide studentts with activities to improve their learning (e.g., reading texts, watching videos or solving exercises). But VLEs usually also provide optional activities (e.g., changing an avatar profile or setting goals). Some of these have a connection with the learning process, but are not directly devoted to learning concepts (e.g., setting goals). Few works have dealt with the use of optional activities and the relationships between these activities and other metrics in VLEs. This paper analyzes the use of optional activities at different levels in a specific case study with 291 students from three courses (physics, chemistry and mathematics) using the Khan Academy platform. The level of use of the different types of optional activities is analyzed and compared to that of learning activities. In addition, the relationship between the usage of optional activities and different student behaviors and learning metrics is presented

First results of the European grapevine collections' collaborative network: Validation of a standard eno-carpological phenotyping method

A standard protocol for phenotyping structural and compositional aspects of the grape berry has been adopted by 18 East and West European germplasm collections during one season by testing a total of 469 accessions, including reference cultivars as well as local and minor germplasm accessions of specific interest. The protocol consists in the collection of triplicates for 26 phenotypic traits, from biological samples, each formed by 10 berries collected from 9 representative bunches from every analyzed accessions. The protocol concatenates the data from measurements and acquisitions, with the objective to generate new derived variables, which are expressed with different units (%; content per kg of grapes, per berry, per g of tissue). For each variable, the Least Significant Differences (LSD), to contrast a pair of single accession mean values, and the Confidence Intervals (CI), to estimate each single accession mean value, were computed. The application of the protocol revealed satisfactory results with high accuracy and efficiency in estimation of phenotypic traits of each accession. The whole data set will be useful for researchers, breeders and viticulturists in yield evaluation of grapevine cultivars, as well as in comparative analyses of environment-variety interaction