VTechWorks
VTechWorks provides global access to Virginia Tech scholarship, including journal articles, books, theses, dissertations, conference papers, slide presentations, technical reports, working papers, administrative documents, videos, images, and more by faculty, students, and staff. Faculty can deposit items to VTechWorks from Elements, including journal articles covered by the University open access policy. Email vtechworks@vt.edu for help.
Open Access Policy
Virginia Tech's open access policy enables researchers to deposit the accepted version of scholarly articles with no embargo.
Theses and Dissertations
Virginia Tech was first in the world to require ETDs in 1997, and continues to add scans of older theses and dissertations.
Open Textbooks
More than 50 freely available and openly licensed textbooks are among our most downloaded items.
Communities in VTechWorks
Select a community to browse its collections.
Recent Submissions
Promoting Student Learning by Automatically Managing Resubmission Tokens
Rajesh, Saketh Krishman (Virginia Tech, 2026-02-06)
In many university computer science courses, strict deadlines can create stress and penalize students who face unexpected challenges. A popular alternative is to give students a few "late passes", "resubmission passes", or "tokens" to use on assignments throughout the semester. While this approach is more flexible and equitable, it creates a significant amount of manual work for instructors, who have to track every request and update deadlines across multiple websites. This thesis tackles that problem in two ways. First, it introduces the EGP Broker, an LMS-integrated LTI 1.3 tool that automates the entire process, removing the need for instructors to manually manage tokens or for students to perform extra steps to use them. Second, this thesis analyzes what happened when a large introductory computer science course switched from a traditional late penalty (a 10% deduction per day) to a manually managed flexible token resubmission based policy. The results indicate that the flexible policy was associated with higher pass rates, improved final course and exam grades, and reduced dropout rates. Most students thrived under this system, using the flexibility to manage their time effectively without compromising the quality of their work. While a small number of students appeared to struggle with using the policy productively, the overall impact was positive. Overall, flexible token policies show great promise in promoting student success, while also highlighting the importance of providing additional support for students who may need more structure.
From Burden to Breakthrough: Rapid and Collaborative Open Textbook Creation
Walz, Anita R.; Marsh, Joshua; Kirschner, Jessica; Council, Austin; McCain, Kate; Sunderman, Hannah M.; Guillard, Julianne (2026-02-06)
This interactive session will invite audiences to critically think about their use and perception of course materials as presenters explore open educational resources (OER), writing sprints, and collaborative authorship through the experiences of the 2025-26 VIVA Rapid Publishing Program. This approach incorporates institutional support-including week-long in-person facilitation, instructional design, copyright and publishing expertise, and hospitality-in an effort to leverage the benefits of collaboration and reduce faculty burdens for authoring OER. Through the guidance of panelists, attendees will begin to explore what course materials actually benefit them and their students and potential avenues of support to reach those ideals.
Open Educational Resources (OER)(1), including open textbooks, are used by 33% of higher education faculty. They are increasingly selected because of their equal or better student learning outcomes (in contrast to commercial course materials), zero-cost access, unrestricted redistribution and opportunities to customize for individual classes and implement innovative pedagogies (Elder, 2019; Cozart et. al., 2021; Seaman & Seaman, 2025).
Although using OER saves faculty significant effort, gaps in available disciplinary resources generate an additional burden to create new materials. And while OER are often lauded as “free,” this minimizes the extensive efforts required to create them. While some faculty author OER independently (Burnett, 2025; Guzman & Woolley, 2021; Marsh et al., 2022), an increasing number of OER programs provide authorship compensation; some also provide support structures similar to traditional book publishers (Walz et. al, 2016; Santiago & Rey, 2020).
To help overcome the OER authorship burden at its 70 institutions, VIVA, Virginia’s Academic Library Consortium, established the Rapid Publishing Program (VIVA, n.d.). This program builds on prior collaborative writing sprint models (Book Sprints Limited, n.d.; Baker et al., 2014; Jhanghiani et al., 2016). After identifying a gap in OER in an area of high need for Virginia higher education, VIVA forms a multi-institutional team of faculty instructor/subject-matter experts to author the text and librarians and instructional designers to instruct, provide framing, and support authorship. VIVA provides funding, infrastructure, and program coordination for authorship, review, production, and outreach. Authorship is viewed from a connectivist lens, leveraging multiple preparatory online sessions to plan features and content of the resource (Maawali, 2022; Tham et al., 2021). During a week-long, in-person structured writing sprint, authors establish and refine shared understanding of the task (Vygotsky, 1978), write in teams, offer constructive feedback, and create a first draft of the text.
This interactive session will invite audiences to critically think about their use and perception of course materials as presenters explore OER, writing sprints, and collaborative authorship through the experiences of the 2025-26 VIVA Rapid Publishing Program. This program gathered 7 faculty and 3 librarians to author an introductory leadership studies textbook during Summer 2025. Project librarians will share the program’s planning and organizational framework and lessons learned. The participating faculty will describe their experience and accomplishments, as well as reflect on benefits and challenges. Faculty will discuss how programs such as the Rapid Publishing Program 1) provide value through structured writing, review, and management of ongoing editorial and production services, 2) enable instructors to reach their goal of drafting an open textbook in five days, and 3) expand instructors’ thinking about teaching, design of teaching resources, and consideration for use of OER. Audience engagement will be included throughout the session and ample time will be reserved for audience Q&A.
Footnotes
(1) "[OER are] learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others” (UNESCO, 2019)
Reference List
Baker, R., Berry, D., Brokering, M., Dieter, M., French, A., & Ruhling, B. (2014). On Book Sprints v1.1. http://data.booksprints.net/books/On_Book_Sprints_v1_1.pdf
Book Sprints Limited. (n.d.). Booksprints. OER World Map. https://oerworldmap.org/resource/urn%3Auuid%3A0dc55f0f-5467-466c-9047-8c07b129346d
Burnett, M. (2025). Publishing OER on a shoestring: Manifold to the rescue. Iowa OER listserv. (February 4, 2025) https://web.archive.org/web/20250902193257/https://groups.google.com/g/iowa-oer/c/GOvBLBs3T5Q
Elder, A. (2019). OER starter kit. Iowa State University Digital Press. https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/oerstarterkit/
Cozart, D. L., Horan, E. M., & Frome, G. (2021). Rethinking the traditional textbook: A case for open educational resources (OER) and no-cost learning materials. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 9(2). https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.9.2.13
Guzman, I., & Woolley, S. (2021). A shoestring grassroots approach to publishing an open educational resource engineering textbook. 2021 Fall ASEE Middle Atlantic Section Meeting Proceedings. https://peer.asee.org/a-shoestring-grassroots-approach-to-publishing-an-open-educational-resource-engineering-textbook
Jhangiani, R., Green, A. G., & Belshaw, J. (2016). Three approaches to open textbook development. In P. Blessinger & T. J. Bliss (Eds.), Open education: International perspectives in higher education (pp. 178-198). Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0103
Maawali, W. (2022). Experiential writing through connectivism learning theory: A case study of English language students in Oman higher education. Reflective Practice, 23(3), 305-318. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2021.2021167
Marsh, C., Marsh, J., & Chesnutt, K. (2022). Exploring OER as a mediator for equity gaps in student course success rates for introductory biology courses in the NCCCS. North Carolina Community College Journal of Teaching Innovation, 6-12. https://www.ncccfa.org/_files/ugd/40c3b6_3309827827f24f9a9d14574282b848aa.pdf
Santiago, A., & Ray, L. (2020). Navigating support models for OER publishing: Case studies from the University of Houston and the University of Washington. Reference Services Review, 48(3), 397-413. https://doi.org/10.1108/RSR-03-2020-0019
Seaman, J. E., & Seaman, J. (2025). Deeply digital: Educational resources in higher education. Bayview Analytics. https://www.bayviewanalytics.com/reports/deeplydigital2025.pdf
Tham, J., Duin, A., Veeramoothoo, S., & Fuglsby, B. (2021). Connectivism for writing pedagogy: Strategic networked approaches to promote international collaborations and intercultural learning. Computers and Composition, 60, 102643. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2021.102643
UNESCO. (2019). Open educational resources. https://www.unesco.org/en/open-educational-resources
VIVA. (n.d.). VIVA rapid publishing program. VIVA Publishing. https://vivalib.org/va/open/publishing
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.
Walz, A., Jensen, K., & Salem, J. A., Jr. (2016). SPEC Kit 315: Affordable course content and open educational resources. Association of Research Libraries. https://publications.arl.org/Affordable-Course-Content-Open-Educational-Resources-SPEC-Kit-351
Paradox, Conflict, and Structural Intelligence
Paul, JoAnn M.; Bettendorf, Isaac T. (IEEE Computer Society, 2025-02)
We introduce the conflict architecture inspired by the human brain and include performance results for solving a maze while under unpredictable, time-constrained pursuit. Our goals are to illustrate the role played by physical structure in intelligence and introduce methods of evaluation consistent with brain-inspired computer architecture.
Rebranding Pigmentocracy: Analyzing Marketing Strategies of Unilever’s Skin Lightening Products in India
Dhillon-Jamerson, Komal (2025-04-01)
This paper examines the trajectory of UK based Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL)’s video advertisements for skin lightening products in the past 15 years, critiquing the company’s rebranding of Fair & Lovely to Glow & Lovely. Discourse analysis of video commercials explores the ways in which social advantages and disadvantages are accentuated through problematic narratives, meanings and representations—more specifically the influence of Eurocentric racial, colorist, and gender values on marketing campaigns. Prior to its rebranding in 2020, Unilever’s Fair & Lovely regularly promoted skin-lightening products by further constructing and highlighting disadvantages of darker skin, including less marriage prospects and romantic interest, diminished dignity, and lack of employment opportunities. HUL’s (and other manufacturers of skin lightening products) impetus for changing its contentious branding and marketing came about in part due to the Black Lives Matters movement, sparked by George Floyd’s death in 2020. Additionally, petitions to cease the production and distribution of HUL’s Fair & Lovely line received over 18k signatures (Jones, 2020, para 3), which prompted HUL to “acknowledge the branding suggests “a singular ideal of beauty”” (Jones, 2020). Post rebranding, Glow & Lovely’s marketing strategies currently prioritizes an emphasis on gender inclusivity, while indirectly showcasing advantages of lighter skin in a posturing display of racial, colour, and gender sensitivity. As it relates to pigmentocracy, Unilever’s baseless striving toward gender equality functions as a diversion from persistent racist and colorist tropes that are increasingly obscured by shifting performative messages and meanings in the past 15 years. This intersectional analysis sheds light on how Unilever’s advertisements claim to promote gender and racial inclusivity, yet continue to promote longstanding inequalities originating in colonialism.
Education Research: Entrustable Professional Activities for General Neurology Advanced Practice Providers: Results of a Modified Delphi Consensus Process
Harrison, Daniel S.; Doherty, Elyse M.; Meffert, Cassandra C.; Doughty, Christopher T.; Morgenlander, Joel C.; Entrustable Professional Activities for General Neurology APPs (EPAGNA) Study Group; Shah, Aashit (Wolters Kluwer Health, 2026-03)
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: A dedicated didactic framework, assessment strategy, and consensus expectations for advanced practice providers (APPs) entering general neurology practice for the first time have not been described. We aimed to define entrustable professional activities (EPAs) for general neurology APPs and to provide further validity evidence for the EPAs through application of the EQual rubric. METHODS: This was a modified Delphi consensus process. Panelists were leaders of neurology APP fellowship programs and other established experts in neurology APP education. The steering committee identified putative EPA topics. Panelists voted on a 5-point Likert scale how important it was that a new general neurology APP be able to perform specific activities with indirect supervision remotely available by the end of their on-the-job training. Panelists were allowed to propose modifications to putative EPAs and suggest new EPAs. After 3 rounds of voting, full EPA descriptions were drafted by the steering committee. Full EPA descriptions were sent to external experts in neurology APP education for assessment of their structure and quality. The steering committee met again to discuss feedback from the external experts and make adjustments as needed. The full EPA descriptions were sent to the Delphi panelists for a final round of voting. RESULTS: Of 35 experts invited to participate in the Delphi process, 30 agreed to serve as panelists, 16 of whom were program leaders in neurology APP fellowship programs. The steering committee proposed 13 core and 52 nested EPA topics and the panelists proposed 6 modifications and an additional 4 nested EPAs. After 3 rounds of voting, 13 core and 46 nested EPAs were retained and full EPA descriptions were authored. All EPA descriptions met the pre-specified cut score for quality and structure and were retained in a final Delphi round. Overall entrustment expectations did not differ between panelists who were fellowship program leaders and those who were not (5-point Likert median [interquartile range], 4 [4-5] vs 4 [4-5], p = 0.980, r = 0.005). DISCUSSION: These consensus EPAs may be applied for curricular development and assessment for new general neurology APPs. Entrustment expectations did not differ between those who were leaders in fellowship programs and those who were not.