Open@VT

The Open Education Initiative at Virginia Tech is pleased to announce the republication of Methods of Teaching Agriculture, third edition by L. H. Newcomb; J. David McCracken; J. Robert Warmbrod; and M. Susie Whittington.

NOTE: This text was originally published by Pearson Prentice Hall in 2004 (ISBN 0131134183). Rights to the book have been reverted to the authors. The book was reformatted and republished in its entirety in 2025 and released as an open textbook under a CC BY NC 4.0 license.

Methods of Teaching Agriculture, third edition is a 406-page methods-of-teaching book. Providing a clear and concise framework for teaching and problem solving in agricultural education, Methods of Teaching Agriculture, third edition is a necessary text for any teaching methods course. It includes a comprehensive examination of theory and research in guiding principles for how students learn best. Numerous illustrations and graphs clarify all concepts discussed within the text.

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Resources for Formal and Non-Formal Middle School Educators

The  Virginia Tech Center for Advanced Innovation in Agriculture (CAIA)  is pleased to announce the release of The Agricultural Cyberbiosecurity Education Resource Collection intended for middle-school level educators in formal and non-formal educational settings. 

Cyberbiosecurity is an emerging field that focuses on creating security measures for digital aspects of our food and agriculture systems, creating a structure and opportunity for a safe food system that can meet the large needs of a growing population and world. 

This collection of 30 documents includes customizable resources designed for formal and non-formal agricultural educators working with middle school aged youth.  Three types of materials are included in the collection: 

• – Reference materials for facilitators to introduce key concepts
• – Youth-facing fact sheets present these concepts at a 6th grade level 
• – Hands-on activities integrate agriculture and cyberbiosecurity concepts Continue reading

The Open Education Initiative at Virginia Tech is pleased to announce the release of an openly-licensed, revised first edition of Radio Systems Engineering by Steven W. Ellingson.

Radio Systems Engineering, Revised First Edition https://doi.org/10.21061/radiosystemsengineering-revised1st is lightly updated from the version published in 2016 by Cambridge University Press (ISBN 9781107068285). While Cambridge retains rights to continue to sell and license their print and electronic versions, Cambridge has granted the author enough rights to update and release the book freely under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial International License (CC BY NC 4.0). 

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As Open Access Week approaches, it’s time to check in on the percentage of open access scholarship at Virginia Tech, and compare it to last year’s data. Our OA percentage improved from about 50% to 55%, and although our peers are improving too, the increase was enough to move up slightly in comparison to our SCHEV peers as well as Virginia universities. However, in the global rankings, Virginia Tech fell further behind.

The four data sources used for OA percentage are CWTS Leiden Ranking, COKI (both openly available), SciVal/Scopus, and Dimensions (both proprietary).  All cover the years 2018-2021, except for COKI, which is 2021 only.  Virginia Tech’s percentage of open access articles was highest in COKI (59%) and lowest in SciVal (50%).  Results from the four data sources were entered into a spreadsheet to show how Virginia Tech compares to its 25 SCHEV peers, as well as to other Virginia universities.

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The Open Education Initiative and Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech are pleased to announce the release of a 4th edition of Fundamentals of Business  and selected new slide decks to accompany chapters.

Fundamentals of Business  https://doi.org/10.21061/fundamentalsofbusiness4e , fourth edition (2023) is an 434-page open education resource intended to serve as a no-cost, faculty-customizable primary text for one-semester undergraduate introductory business courses. It covers the following topics in business: Teamwork; economics; ethics; entrepreneurship; business ownership, management, and leadership; organizational structures and operations management; human resources and motivating employees; managing in labor union contexts; marketing and pricing strategy; hospitality and tourism, accounting and finance, personal finances, and technology in business. The textbook was designed for use in Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business introductory level business course, MGT1104 Foundations of Business and is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike 4.0 license (CC BY NC-SA 4.0).

Instructors reviewing, adopting, or adapting this textbook are asked to please help us understand your use of the material by filling out this form http://bit.ly/business-interest.

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