Virginia Tech’s research while affiliated with Eastern Illinois University and other places

An overview of the concept of course portfolios, how they may be used in courses in business, professional, and technical communication pedagogy, and highlight their value for assessment.

In confronting the pressing issue of climate change, we introduce "Causal-Prompt", an innovative prompting strategy that adapts large language models (LLMs) for classification and regression tasks through the application of weakly supervised causal reasoning. We delve into the complexities of data shifts within energy systems, often resulting from the dynamic evolution of sensor networks, leading to discrepancies between training and test data distributions or feature inconsistencies. By embedding domain-specific reasoning in the finetuning process , CausalPrompt significantly bolsters the adaptability and resilience of energy systems to these shifts. We show that CausalPrompt significantly enhances predictions in scenarios characterized by feature shifts, including electricity demand, solar power generation, and cybersecurity within energy infrastructures. This approach underlines the crucial role of CausalPrompt in enhancing the reliability and precision of predictions in energy systems amid feature shifts, highlighting its significance and potential for real-world applications in energy management and cybersecurity, contributing effectively to climate change mitigation efforts.

Closing the Design Cycle: Integration of Analysis, Simulation, and Measurements Results to Guide Students on Evaluation of Design 120th ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Atlanta GA, 2013

This paper highlights the growing inequalities within our present academic environment, whereby students and academics from certain backgrounds are significantly disadvantaged compared to others. It calls for imaginative new initiatives that seek to redress this imbalance, and points towards the example of an online para-educational platform, DigitalFUTURES (DF) sees education as a basic human right and tries to democratize architectural education. The paper describes how DF evolved, what principles it adheres to, and what strategies it has adopted. It argues, however, that such initiatives need to be backed up by other measures. It concludes by calling upon the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) to introduce new measures in order to make its events more accessible to those from less-advantaged backgrounds.

Social media platforms have become pivotal in shaping user behavior and influencing market values within the cryptocurrency industry. However, assessing the impact of social media on cryptocurrency users is challenging given the market's volatility and evolving mechanisms. To that end, this paper investigates user perceptions of crypto signals on X (formerly Twitter). We introduce a novel dataset, CryptoSignalMonitor, and conduct a preliminary analysis to investigate the impact of X crypto signalson the behavior of users based on user engagement and investment decisions. Overall, our findings demonstrate that users frequently engage with crypto signalson social media, which correlate with a significant increase in the value of cryptocurrencies. We provide our dataset and data collection scripts 1 as a resource for future researchers to investigate the effects of crypto signalson X, and aim to motivate future work generating datasets to understand the impact of social media on the behavior of users.

Multitasking has been demonstrated to negatively impact performance across a wide range of tasks, including in the classroom, yet students continue to multitask. This study examined the relationship between college students' perceptions and performance of technology-based multitasking. Technology-based multitasking and self-efficacy data were collected and analyzed from 265 undergraduate students. Students engaged in a technology-based multitasking perceptions survey, a video + survey multitasking task or a video-only non-multitasking task, and a technology-based self-efficacy survey. An analysis of student perceptions indicated that students understood that different tasks required different levels of mental effort to complete successfully and that multitasking across high-mental effort tasks required greater effort than multitasking across low-mental effort tasks. In addition, students in the video + survey multitasking group significantly underperformed students in the video-only non-multitasking group. Finally, the relationship between technology-based multitasking and self-efficacy was addressed in a correlational analysis between student technology-based multitasking scores and technology-based self-efficacy scores, yielding no significant relationship. The study findings indicate that most students have an understanding and awareness of multitasking, but ultimately, whether they believed they could multitask or not, multitasking significantly impeded performance.

ASCE 09023001-1 ASCE-ASME J. Risk Uncertainty Eng. Syst., Part A: Civ. Eng. ASCE-ASME J. Risk Uncertainty Eng. Syst., Part A: Civ. Eng., 2023, 9(4): 09023001 Downloaded from ascelibrary.org (https://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/AJRUA6.RUENG-1240)

Positive social contexts are important to special education teachers’ (SETs) sense of relatedness in schools and their collaborative work with others as they plan, deliver, and assess their students’ learning. Quantitative research results suggest a strong relationship between SETs’ social supports and their job satisfaction and retention, however, far less attention has been focused on what is meant by social support in SETs’ day-to-day work. In this chapter we reviewed 26 qualitative research studies over a 20-year period to better understand SETs’ positive and problematic experiences with leaders, colleagues, and paraprofessionals (paras), using their own words when available. We drew from the new special education teacher (SET) literature, the attrition/retention literature, and, literature focused on SETs of color, as they are underrepresented in schools and important to the achievement of students. We focused on both the source of support or and non-support (e.g., principals, colleagues), and the type or content of support or non-support, identifying both problematic and supportive experiences from SETs’ perspectives. We conclude this chapter with directions for future research and implications for teacher and leadership preparation and practice.