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
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Recent Submissions
Teaching Neutrality, Encountering Conflict: Civic Education and the Student Perception of the U.S. Supreme Court
Haraway, Tate McBride (Virginia Tech, 2026-08-19)
Public confidence in the United States Supreme Court has declined in recent years as perceptions of judicial partisanship have increased. At the same time, civic education frequently presents the Court as a politically neutral institution. This study examines whether state-approved instructional materials contribute to this disconnect. This study investigates how South Carolina's state-approved standards and high school government textbooks frame the U.S. Supreme Court and what ideological assumptions and omissions those representations reveal. Using Norman Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis, this study examines two South Carolina standards documents and eight state-approved government textbooks spanning three adoption cycles (2014, 2023, and provisional 2025). Three California district-approved textbooks are analyzed as a comparative case to assess whether identified discursive patterns are unique to South Carolina or reflect broader civic education conventions. These findings suggest that state-approved instructional materials construct a simplified understanding of judicial authority that may contribute to the gap between students' classroom expectations and contemporary public perceptions of the Supreme Court. The study contributes to scholarship on civic education, judicial legitimacy, and Critical Discourse Analysis by connecting these previously separate fields.
Dusk Runs
Elam, Ayla (Virginia Tech, 2026-08-19)
This is the second full draft of my manuscript, which is currently in preparation for submission. I will rewrite it a third time in the coming months, further developing the 1992 protagonist, the addition of whom was the major change from first draft to second draft. My third draft will also focalize certain elements of the 2017 plot line to simplify the plot structure and the levels of mystery at play. As it currently stands, this draft reads just under 75,000 words.
From Diary to Discussion: The PCAR Framework for Scaffolding Empathy-Oriented Learning in HCI Education
Fan, Jixiang (Virginia Tech, 2026-08-19)
Computing education has long emphasized functional implementation, technical correctness, and system building. As computing systems become increasingly embedded in real-world social contexts and everyday life, however, helping students understand user experience, contextual differences, needs and constraints, and the human impact of technical decisions has become an increasingly important educational goal. Yet for many undergraduate computing students, it remains challenging to shift from technical implementation to user understanding in human-computer interaction and to translate user needs into concrete system design decisions. Design empathy is an important capability for supporting this shift. Here, empathy does not simply refer to emotional resonance, but to the ability to understand users' situations, goals, constraints, and value judgments, and to bring that understanding into design thinking. This dissertation introduces diary study as a pedagogical approach in HCI and computing education, with the goal of helping students gradually develop user-oriented understanding and design judgment through sustained recording, analysis, and reflection on technology-use experiences. Through an exploratory comparison of conventional HCI learning activities, represented by observation and affinity diagramming, with diary recording alone, this dissertation finds that conventional HCI activities do not necessarily lead to stable gains in students' empathy, while sustained diary recording shows potential as an instructional scaffold. Building on this exploration and on established diary study practices in HCI, this dissertation translates the diary study research method into the Plan, Collect, Analyze, Reflect (PCAR) diary study framework. This framework supports students in turning real-world experiences into learning materials that can be recorded, analyzed, and discussed. In the Reflect stage of PCAR, this dissertation further designs and implements a reflection activity centered on focus group discussion, forming a diary-to-discussion learning process that moves from individual experience recording to collective reflection. Diary recording provides students with sustained, concrete, and contextualized materials from their own use experiences, allowing them to identify problems, emotional responses, and potential user needs through real interactions. Focus group discussion then gives students opportunities to encounter others' experiences, compare differences, revise judgments, and reconsider user contexts. To evaluate this learning process, the study uses the EMPA-D scale to measure changes in students' empathy at three stages: before the learning activities, after diary recording, and after focus group discussion. It also analyzes students' reflective feedback through qualitative coding. The results show that students' empathy-related abilities improved significantly after diary recording and continued to develop after focus group discussion. The qualitative findings further show that students not only reinforced and refined their existing user awareness but also deepened their understanding of users, contexts, and design tradeoffs while beginning to reexamine their own assumptions, judgments, and cognitive blind spots. Overall, this dissertation proposes and evaluates a PCAR-based diary study pathway for supporting empathy-oriented learning in HCI education, and offers a structured and practical pedagogical approach for human-centered learning in broader computing education.
Food and Nutrition Policy in Dietetics Education: A Snapshot of Policy Education in Undergraduate, Graduate, and Dietetic Internship Programs
Mohn, Ashlynn (Virginia Tech, 2026-08-04)
The purpose of this project was to examine how accredited dietetic programs, from undergraduate level to the graduate level/dietetic internship, prepare and provide opportunities for students to learn about nutrition policy and advocacy. Dietetics program directors completed a mixed-methods survey, yielding 18 responses from Didactic Programs in Dietetics (DPD, n = 6) and Graduate Programs and Dietetic Internships (GP, DI, n = 12). Evaluators assessed satisfaction responses using a scale from one to five and open-ended questions. Programs reported an overall average policy competence score of 3.54 out of 5. Programs felt their strongest area was preparing students to become trusted scientific voices (M = 3.94) but felt that adapting curriculum to legislative updates (M = 3.44) and providing policy career exposure (M = 3.16) were the most challenging. Information from the qualitative responses revealed that issues and barriers to providing policy information included faculty, time, lack of expertise, student disengagement, and rapid shifts in federal policy. Undergraduate programs reported higher average levels of confidence in legislative adaptations (M = 3.8) compared to than graduate/internship programs (M = 3.2). Based on these replies, recommendations included developing updated policy toolkits, addressing student disengagement, and strengthening collaborations with dietitians working in public policy.
Assessing Enteral Nutrition Adequacy and Future Protocol Changes in a Small Regional Hospital
Roberts, David T. (Virginia Tech, 2026-07-30)
Enteral nutrition, commonly referred to as tube feeding, is a method of providing liquid nutrition directly into the gastrointestinal tract for individuals who cannot meet nutritional recommendations through oral intake alone. Traditional inpatient hospital enteral nutrition protocols operate under a rate-based feeding system. However, there is a significant body of research indicating that these protocols often under-feed patients requiring enteral nutrition.1 To reduce the risk of adverse patient outcomes, the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition recommends delivering at least 80% of prescribed protein and calories to patients that require enteral nutrition.2 To address the gap between recommendations and real-world practice, volume-based feeding protocols emerged as an alternative option. Research completed on volume-based feeding suggests that the protocol can significantly improve nutritional delivery.1 This project aimed to develop an evidence-based educational program centered around enteral nutrition practices and feeding protocol differences. The goal of this project was to increase provider knowledge regarding enteral nutrition, improve current enteral nutrition protocol adequacy through education, and lay the foundation for future protocol changes. The educational program was piloted by registered dietitians and clinical nutrition managers. Through survey evaluation, all respondents reported that they would use the educational material as a training resource in the future, and half of the respondents reported that they learned new information about enteral nutrition. While the long-term goal of this program is to be recognized as an official training resource for healthcare professionals that encounter enteral nutrition scenarios, more research is needed to determine further program modifications.