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 40 freely available and openly licensed textbooks are among our most downloaded items.
Communities in VTechWorks
Select a community to browse its collections.
Recent Submissions
The Nature and Perceptions of Critical Reflective Writing within Hands-On Technology and Engineering Design-Based Learning
Smith, Mattie Quesenberry (Virginia Tech, 2024-12-23)
The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) has influenced educators to adapt design thinking (DT) for technology and engineering design-based learning (T/E DBL) because they believe design-based problems introduce authentic, open-ended challenges valuable for developing hands-on problem-solving. These integrative real-world challenges bring learners into contact with unfamiliar problems and critical incidents which kindle learners' transformative learning related to far transfer and self-directed learning. Critical incidents also correlate with learners' immediate emotional reactions to unfamiliar knowledge and challenging open-ended hands-on performances. These emotional reactions correspond with learners' critical reflection (CR) transformative for them. CR about threshold experiences relates to changes of perspective useful for managing design thinking in future design-related challenges. In addition to improved self-regulation during DT, learners experiencing critical incidents understand domain content better, and they see how to leverage it in the future.
However, while researchers assume CR happens throughout design-based learning (DBL) due to its complex, open-ended challenges, the research has not documented learners' critical experiences and perceptions related to their changes of perspective during DT, nor has the research deeply described reflection critical to transformative, threshold experiences and changes of perspective related to learning. Therefore, a flexible framework for supporting learners' management of critical incidents during DT does not exist. Because learners' hands-on experiences connected to critical reflection are less understood in design thinking (DT), educators and practitioners of T/E DBL know less about scaffolding for DBL during its iterative, decision-making phases in which critical incidents likely occur. Research suggests scaffolding for critical reflection correlates with more effective, iterative design-based ideation and prototyping—for learners and experts alike.
After reviewing research in T/E, the scholarship of teaching and learning, health and human sciences, and the humanistic studies, this two-phase qualitative study identifies themes about designers' emotions and exigences related to hands-on critical reflection during DT. Using the themes from this literature review, Phase 1 of this study defines critical reflection and critical reflective writing (CRW). Then, the study instruments a CRW prompt for integrating CRW into T/E DBL. Since CRW is a reflective tool that slows thinking, Phase 1 of the study uses CRW to slow DT in its iterative phases, allowing participants to express their critical, threshold experiences and changes of perspective which happen during their active, hands-on, design-based problem solving. Phase 1 of this study analyzes the nature and perceptions from three designers' CRW and discloses themes about their CR and DT for the threshold experiences and critical incidents they describe within the recursive phases of prototyping and optimization. After collecting participants' CRW during these phases, the study interprets themes for these participant's critical incidents, threshold concepts, and related changes of perspective. Phase 2 of this study uses retrospective focus group interviews with the same three participants in their design teams to describe participants' experiences and perceived relations between their CR, CRW, DT, and T/E DBL.
After data collection from both phases, this qualitative study analyzes the CRWs and interview transcripts through inductive coding. The results for Phase 1 include categorical themes for Emotional Awareness, Social Awareness and Communication, Awareness of the Nature of Real-World Problem-Solving, and Holistic Awareness for Order and Arrangement in Hierarchical Problem-Solving. The categorical themes for Phase 2 include Stepping Back and Getting Perspective, Making Progress, Materializing Abstract Thinking and Less Realized Real-World Experiences, and Exploring Future Integration for CRW. Some of the categorical themes overlap for Phase 1 and Phase 2.
This study contributes a broader awareness for less-expert designers' emotional exigences, threshold concepts, and transformative experiences happening during DBL, as documented through their CRW. The study informs best practices for scaffolding T/E DBL for CR, so gaps can be narrowed between less-expert and more-expert design-related performances during hands-on iteration and prototyping. This research also informs recent cross-curricular, humanistic research that integrates writing and T/E DBL in the STEM disciplines, K-18, so learners can identify and describe experiences related to metacognition and self-regulated learning across ages, disciplines, and design settings in support of self-directed learning.
Essays on Adapting to Extreme Shocks: Local Market Correlations and Global Agricultural Trade Responses to Weather and Yield Variability
Zheng, Yixing (Virginia Tech, 2024-12-23)
This dissertation explores how extreme events, climate, and yield variability affect local agricultural markets and global agricultural trade, offering insights to improve resilience and adaptability. It comprises three chapters. The first chapter analyzes the co-movement of corn basis returns among six local market pairs in North Carolina during extreme events using Extreme Value Theory (EVT). By focusing on the basis, this paper investigates the local market correlations that reflect local market conditions. Results show stronger lower-tail correlations than upper tails, with Candor and Cofield reaching 0.76 during negative shocks, indicating asymmetric price-setting behavior. These findings highlight the reliance on shared infrastructure, emphasizing the need for coordinated risk management, supply chain resilience, and targeted insurance policies. The study also reveals non-normal, asymmetric tail distributions, underscoring the limitations of standard time series models that assume normal and symmetric residuals to capture extreme market correlations. The second chapter examines the significant direct effects of growing season, area-weighted weather shocks on wheat and corn exports and imports. A 1 ◦C rise in exporter temperatures reduces exports by 4.6%, while a 1 ◦C increase in importer temperatures raises imports by 3.7%. Similarly, a 1 mm increase in precipitation reduces exports and imports by 3%. Exporters prioritize domestic markets during weather shocks, with lower-income countries being particularly vulnerable to these disruptions. The third chapter investigates how bystander countries—unaffected exporters and import-reliant countries—adjust their trade in response to yield shocks in major wheat-exporting countries. Argentina demonstrates significant trade adjustments with its importers in response to both current and lagged yield shocks of major wheat exporters, potentially due to its export structure. Import-reliant countries with more diversified sourcing exhibit smaller trade adjustments, indicating the importance of diversification as a resilience strategy. These findings stress the importance of supportive policies and infrastructure to enhance global trade resilience and adaptation to extreme yield and weather shocks.
Regional Economic Development with EDA University Centers
University Economic Development Administration; Virginia Tech Center for Economic and Community Engagement (EDA University Center Program, 2024)
The U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) University Center (UC) program seeks to help strengthen regional economies by leveraging higher education assets to promote innovation, entrepreneurship, technology commercialization, and skilled talent.
For more than 18 months, the University Economic Development Administration (UEDA) and the Virginia Tech Center for Economic and Community Engagement (CECE) studied how EDA-designated UCs organize, operate, and implement their economic development programs. With EDA support, UEDA sought both to expand its reach to the UCs and support EDA’s goals by facilitating the transfer of knowledge and sharing best practices among the EDA UCs. From this work, UEDA identified common elements across the EDA UCs and offered new ideas to increase the impact EDA UCs have on the communities they serve.
Virginia Tech Commencement Fall 2024
(Virginia Tech, 2024-12)
The program for the Fall 2024 graduation ceremonies at Virginia Tech.
A Workshop: Problem-Solving Styles through Adaption-Innovation Theory and Air Force Athletics
Campbell, Hannah (Virginia Tech, 2024-12-20)
The purpose of this project was to enhance team collaboration by addressing diversity in problem-solving within Air Force Athletics. To achieve this, I collaborated with a KAI-certified master practitioner to design a workshop based on Adaption-Innovation theory (Kirton, 1976; 2003). Before the workshop, each team member of a certain department within Air Force Athletics completed the KAI inventory to determine their position on the KAI continuum. During the workshop, participants explored the principles of the KAI framework and interpreted their scores. By doing this, they gained insights into their individual problem-solving styles. Using their KAI scores, we created scenarios illustrating how the team collectively approaches challenges. The workshop fostered awareness of team dynamics and encouraged members to leverage their diverse cognitive styles for improved collaboration. By applying KAI theory, the team can enhance creativity and productivity by aligning with the framework’s emphasis on effective problem-solving in diverse groups (Kirton, 2003).