1. While preparing your ETD, where did you find answers to your questions?
Please select all that apply.
from ETD tech support (35/1891 responses) 
through e-mail (52/1891 responses) 
from my committee (139/1891 responses) 
at an ETD workshop (91/1891 responses) 
from friends (340/1891 responses) 
by telephone (82/1891 responses) 
Other/Comments (106/1891 responses) 
from New Media Center staff (110/1891 responses) 
other Web site(s) (35/1891 responses) 
VT ETD Web site (901/1891 responses) 96.88% of the people who took this survey
(1023 / 1056) answered this question.
Other Responses (106 for this question) ". . . although this is my first try and I may be re-submitting" "access to adobe/distiller is difficult between fall and spring semesters." "advisor" "AHNR-IT multimedia lab" "Conversation with D. Pluska" "David Pluska" "Defense pack from grad school" "department tech support (psychology)" "Dr. Pluska" "figured questions out on my own" "from grad school" "from non VT friends" "from other students" "Grad School"( 2 ) responses "Grad school mailing" "guessing" "Gwen Ewing" "Had no questions" "I didn't have any questions" "I had a very difficult time finding answers about specific details." "I had done it many times before." "I still thought, despite the fairly good website, that I still didn't know quite what the end result was supposed to be or that I was doing it right." "I was pleased by how easy the process was. The NMC has been a big help throughout my thesis. The workshop that i attended with them was very helpful too." "It would be nice if all the information needed for this project was in one location, easy to find and error free." "looking at sample etds" "ME IT team" "Mr. Dave Pluska" "My bother in law Ken" "No Questions" "NVC Resource Center" "NVGC Video" "other"( 53 ) responses "other ETDs" "other graduates" "other prepared theses" "Previous experience" "Program support technician at Southern Piedmont AREC" "Referred to the VT ETD Website just for some formatting guidelines and submission process" "resources librarian" "SCIC" "Support from the library staff was also received" "technical support at my new job for PDF"( 3 ) responses "Technicians were very helpful." "The online tutorials are very helpful" "the process was self-explanatory" "This was a well developed web-site, but when I did have problems I found it difficult to find a person (never did) who would talk to me in person." "trial and error" "UMI" "Very supportive, appreciate Ed understanding and time" "website needs improving! Layout is not good, very confusing." "Wonderful Website with explicit detail. Difficulty with web transfer to PDF so had to come to campus" 2. If you consulted the VT ETD Web site, please indicate if the site was useful.
Did not consult VT ETD Web site. (54/1015 responses) 
Very useful (473/1015 responses) 
Not useful (26/1015 responses) 
Somewhat useful (296/1015 responses) 
Useful (166/1015 responses) 96.12% of the people who took this survey
(1015 / 1056) answered this question.
3. If you attended an ETD workshop, please indicate if you found the workshop useful.
Somewhat useful (66/962 responses) 
Did not attend ETD workshop. (708/962 responses) 
Useful (79/962 responses) 
Very useful (53/962 responses) 
Not useful (56/962 responses) 91.1% of the people who took this survey
(962 / 1056) answered this question.
4. If you used the New Media Center, please indicate if the staff was helpful.
Very helpful (132/959 responses) 
Somewhat helpful (41/959 responses) 
Helpful (45/959 responses) 
Not helpful (11/959 responses) 
Did not use the New Media Center. (730/959 responses) 90.81% of the people who took this survey
(959 / 1056) answered this question.
5. How many ETDs did you consult while preparing your ETD?
more than 10 (17/1017 responses) 
Did not consult any ETDs. (232/1017 responses) 
3-5 (293/1017 responses) 
1-2 (420/1017 responses) 
6-10 (55/1017 responses) 96.31% of the people who took this survey
(1017 / 1056) answered this question.
6. Compared to what you expected, how difficult was it to create a PDF file?
Somewhat more difficult (123/1019 responses) 
Much more difficult (53/1019 responses) 
Somewhat less difficult (216/1019 responses) 
Much less difficult (409/1019 responses) 
Neither more nor less difficult (218/1019 responses) 96.5% of the people who took this survey
(1019 / 1056) answered this question.
7. My computer is a
PC (954/1031 responses) 
Unix (16/1031 responses) 
Other (20/1031 responses) 
Mac (41/1031 responses) 96.69% of the people who took this survey
(1021 / 1056) answered this question.
Other Responses (20 for this question) "both PC and Unix" "dell"( 3 ) responses "Gateway" "I don't have a computer. I had to borrow." "IBM" "linux"( 3 ) responses "other"( 9 ) responses "WIN-XP" 8. Where were you when you submitted your ETD?
Campus residence hall (4/1121 responses) 
Campus office (363/1121 responses) 
New Media Center (95/1121 responses) 
Tech Connect lab (40/1121 responses) 
Northern Virginia Center (24/1121 responses) 
off-campus workplace (128/1121 responses) 
Off-campus residence (222/1121 responses) 
Another university (33/1121 responses) 
Other (212/1121 responses) 96.5% of the people who took this survey
(1019 / 1056) answered this question.
Other Responses (212 for this question) "220 War Memorial Hall" "advisors office" "AHNR-IT multimedia lab" "Alexandria Research Institute"( 2 ) responses "Architecture Department" "Architecture design lab" "At home in Arkansas" "At Work" "at work place" "Blacksburg campus computer lab" "campus lab" "Campus Laboratory"( 2 ) responses "CCM Lab in Torgersen Hall" "CEARS Lab" "CEARS lab Cheatham Hall" "Chicago" "College of Architecture" "College of Nat Resources CEARS Lab" "computer lab at school" "Computer Science Department" "Cornell Cooperative Extension"( 3 ) responses "Cowgill" "Cowgill Hall"( 2 ) responses "Cowgill Studio Network" "CPES Lab" "CS grad lab" "Dayton, Ohio" "Department Computer Lab"( 3 ) responses "Department Lab" "departmental lab" "EMC" "Equine Medical Center, Leesburg, Va" "Family Home in Arkansas" "Friend's office" "Friends home" "grad comp. lab" "grad lab" "Hahn Hall lab" "Hampton Roads Center" "home"( 11 ) responses "home computer" "Home in North Carolina" "Houston" "Impact Biomechanics Laboratory" "In Dallas, TX" "Jalisco, Mexico" "Kinkos"( 2 ) responses "Kinkos in Norther VA" "Lab"( 2 ) responses "Locomotion lab in Whittemore" "Marion duPont Scott Equine Medical Center" "Maryland" "My home" "my lab"( 2 ) responses "My laboratory" "my office" "My work place" "new job" "New Job, out of state" "Newman Library" "North Korea" "office" "on-campus university building" "other"( 100 ) responses "out of state" "out of state residence" "out-of-state residence" "permanent address" "Permanent Job Work Place" "research lab" "SCIC" "Scott's office" "Silicon Valley" "St. Louis" "Torg. class room" "Torgeson Bridge" "Vet Med computer lab" "Vet Med Library" "Veterinary Medicine" "Veterinary Teaching Hospital"( 2 ) responses "Veterinary Teaching Hospital, Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences" "VMRCVM" "VT CAD Lab" "VTTI" "Wireless Connection at Tech" "Work"( 4 ) responses "Work location" "Work Place" "work(RTP, NC)" 9. Compared to what you expected, how difficult was it to submit your thesis/dissertation electronically?
Neither more nor less difficult. (189/1019 responses) 
Much more difficult (47/1019 responses) 
Somewhat more difficult (107/1019 responses) 
Somewhat less difficult (286/1019 responses) 
Much less difficult (390/1019 responses) 96.5% of the people who took this survey
(1019 / 1056) answered this question.
10. Within the next 1-2 years, what do you intend to publish from your ETD?
Please select all that may apply.
Will not publish (54/1374 responses) 
Journal article (721/1374 responses) 
Conference proceedings (277/1374 responses) 
Other (32/1374 responses) 
Don't know yet (214/1374 responses) 
Book chapter (42/1374 responses) 
Book (34/1374 responses) 96.59% of the people who took this survey
(1020 / 1056) answered this question.
Other Responses (32 for this question) "Already published most of it in journal articles" "Already submitted to scientific journal for publication" "continue online project" "Department literature" "General Technical Report" "hopefully will publish 3 journal articles" "I am going to continue most of the work for the PhD programme" "Los Alamos Internal Publication" "Maybe a journal article" "multiple journal research papers" "NASA report" "other"( 14 ) responses "Patent" "Ph.D. Dissertation?" "Popular press article" "Technical report" "Trade article" "two journal articles and one book chapter have already been published and I will submit another manuscript next week. At least one additional (for a total of at least 5 publications) will result from this dissertation." "White papers" 11. If you restricted access to your VT ETD, what did you base your decision on?
Select all that apply.
Advice of others (66/808 responses) 
Patent pending (35/808 responses) 
Advice of publisher (31/808 responses) 
Advice of faculty (370/808 responses) 
Personal choice (192/808 responses) 
Other (114/808 responses) 56.44% of the people who took this survey
(596 / 1056) answered this question.
Other Responses (114 for this question) "advise if student" "APA publication rules" "Blind choice" "company that owns proprietary informaion" "Desire to publish"( 2 ) responses "did not" "did not restrict"( 7 ) responses "did not restrict access"( 5 ) responses "didn't restrict" "Directed Technologies Inc." "etd web page advice" "I did not restrict access" "I had no choice" "Industrial sponsor" "its my work, not yours to "publish."" "my own advise" "N/A" "NA"( 4 ) responses "Nature of the study" "no applicable" "no restricted" "Non- disclosure agreement" "not available" "not restricted"( 2 ) responses "other"( 60 ) responses "project requirement" "proprietary" "Proprietary Information"( 2 ) responses "Proprietary research for sponsor" "Publications pending" "Publisher's notes" "Requirement by the funding corporation" "security" "security concerns" "Some high profile journals will not publish manuscripts that have appeared in any form elsewhere" "to make sure it would get accepted in journals before releasing it" "Trying to start a company" "waiting to publish in scientific journals" "work performed for sponsor - they own the results" 12. Please include any comments or questions that you have about ETDs?
Text Responses (166 for this question) "$20 fee may be excessive for those who seal the file." "$75 filing fee, indeed." "*please* provide a VT LaTeX stylesheet for thesis/dissertation!!!! This would remove a lot of work and potential for error for those submitters using LaTeX." "A very good method of submitting thesis work." "Adding committee members is confusing, seems to allow only one to be added, had to guess and click on menu on the left to add another one." "Clarify that the student must create a pdf file. Being away from campus, it took extra effort to find a MS Word to Acrobat pdf conversion capability. Nevertheless, I'm very happy to use the ETD as a contributor and a user." "Comment about this survey form: I read "somewhat useful" to be less useful than "useful." I would eliminate this category and just make the choices "very useful," "useful," or "not useful." The current choices can be read wrong very easily." "Copyright information about ETDs and external publishing should be more accessible and understandable. This should defintely be discussed at ETD workshops, even if the campus lawyer is brought in." "Do the various sections such as title, abstract etc. necessarily have to be in different files? I have submitted just one pdf file that contains my entire thesis." "Doing the page numbering for my thesis was the biggest headache of this process. Adobe 5.0 rules" "Easier than I thought" "Electronic publishing necessitates getting permission from many sources to "republish" graphics. It may be a waste of their time and ours when the electronic document is academic and not likely to be distributed." "ETD is a nice resource for continuing research activities." "ETD is a very cumbersome procedure. Converting to PDF is difficult unless you know all the details of proper word processing tools. Most people don't have this knowledge. I was fortunate to find a couple who did, otherwise I would not be here now. There needs to be a way to diminish this stress. Perhaps a workshop on how to convert a PDF file from Word would be helpful...to address the problems that arise from not having typed in Word using all of the correct protocols of word processing (hard returns, not using tabs, etc.)" "ETD review should be fast enough ( A week would be great)" "ETD Submittal is a simple process. The difficult part was getting the thesis completed." "ETD website of Virginia tech is an excellent source of information. The submission process was flawless." "Excellent process." "Experienced difficulty with the Netscape Requirement. None of the computers I tried in my campus office or departmental computer lab had Netscape installed. I had to download it to my personal computer." "Fairly straight forward and relatively easy process" "First attempt failed due to the servers being down. Second attempt failed after a 45-minute upload, because the file name convention was not followed. I could not find a file name convention on the site. This should, AT LEAST, be printed on the upload page. There should really be a check in the input box that checks the file name against this convention BEFORE upload. Uploading large files over a dialup connection is troublesome enough without having to do it twice for something that could have been caught if the information was available." "For an off campus user, had to find someplace that could create thesis in PDF format. Somewhat difficult to do." "For Question 6, I did not realize I had even created a pdf file so couldn't really answer." "Four of the chapters in my dissertation were articles that I have already published. After defending my dissertation it took me 7 months to get the necessary approvals to incorporate these articles into my thesis. This occurred not due to objections from the publishers, but due to unclear instructions from the graduate school on what I was suppose to request in terms of permissions from my publishers. The graduate school needs to provide a standard permissions form for students in my situation so that they can obtain their degree in a timely manner. Without such guidance I spent more time getting permissions than I did actually writing my dissertation. This would be my only serious complaint about my entire graduate school experience." "good" - ( 2 responses) "good job" "Good system!!" "Graduate students work over breaks, but university resources shut down. The graduate school should have a couple of computers for graduate students to complete or practice the ETD process." "Great idea!" "great job polishing this process! it went without a single hickup!" "Hopefully this wasn't too easy to be true!" "How long will it take for me to hear if I have any corrections to make?" "I cannot believe I am done!! :)" "I could not access the conversion tool for postcript files." "I didn't have access to Distiller 4.0 like your example shows, but was lucky enough that Adobe 5.0 does it all pretty easily by itself. Might want to look into explaining 5.0 as well." "I do not understand the need to use propietary formats like PDF. ETDs should use plain postscript format." "I do not wish to add my VITA to the ETD." "I don't understand all the availabiltiy factors. I don't think we should have to fill in much of this infomation as it is already on Hokie Spa" "I found that it was difficult because the data did not update automatically (after each submission), so to verify that everything was the way I needed it to be it took 4 different sessions to get everything uploaded and with the correct restrictions" "I had loads of trouble with page numbers, blank pages, and inconsistencies in table line widths. The $75 fee charged to out going students is highway robbery. The University should do the PDF conversion if we are being charged. We need information on how to edit the PDF files. perhaps the web page could provide links to software downloads." "I have 150 movies (412MB) in my dissertation, and would like my ETD webpage to be more organized than a very long list of files. Could you do that?" "I have about one hundred movies in my dissertation. I want my dissertation webpage can be more organized than a very long list of files." "I liked the PDF version of the document. The conversion was seemless." "I recently learned that the ETD business here is part of a grant for a few folks in the Grad School as well as the Library. As all of the graduate students at VT are subjects of this "study" I am curious how such an enterprise cleared the Human Subjects review process, if indeed such steps were taken. Absent such clearance, the ETD business goes against stated policy of the university. I will be withholding my dissertation as I pursue its publication as a book. It would be a severe dis-service to my career if this work were ever to end up on the internet, as it would diminish interest by proper publishers, and preclude any renumeration for my work. For these and many other reasons I cannot enumerate here, I believe the ETD business robs graduate students at VT of the value of their graduate writing (particularly in the humanities). This is reason enough to discourage anyone from pursuing graduate study at this university." "I submitted my paper in Microsoft Word. Was I supposed to make it into a PDF? I don't have the software or knowledge to do so." "I think it would be useful if the VT ETD website had more specific formatting information (i.e. margins, font size etc.)." "i thought it was prettly simple and straigt forward to I'm confused as to why everyone makes a big deal out of it." "I used LaTeX and would love to see an official Virginia Tech style file and bibliography style file. I know this would be different for each department, but at a minimum a VT math/engineering should be very similar." "I was not able to get the abstract on the main ETD page to remain formatted after copying and pasting the abstract from Word or the PDF, and the recommended codes did not work. Now my abstract doesn't look very nice because I was not able to subscript or underline appropriately." "I would like to see the University offer students away to have their thesis bound." "I would suggest adding a line in the instructions that directs the user to check the 'save file to disk' box when translating with the use of printer driver." "I'm finally finished!" "I'm not sure if I will receive any feedback about any possible errors in submission or not. That is a concern." "If any changes occur during the year(s) of restricted access may I submit a new, updated version of my thesis?" "If taking this survey is a requirement to complete the submission process, WHY DOESN'T IT LET ME SUBMIT MY ANSWERS SO I CAN FINISH WITH THIS THING ONCE AND FOR ALL???" "Instructions for ETD and what is required need to be more clearly outlined." "It is difficult to submit a thesis in 2 weeks' time for international students" "It is great" "It is very difficult for off-campus students to get the approval forms signed by all members and sent in with a check. It would be much better if approval by email were an option." "It is very good and easy to upload a dissertation like this." "It took me a little time to figure out that there should not be any spaces in the title when submitting the dissertation. Once I figured out the error message, all went well." "It took me a while to create a pdf that had the links within my document working the way I would want them to. Otherwsie the submission process is really straight forward." "It was fun. I still like a hard copy myself." "It would be better if ms explorer could be used to submit ETD." "It would be easier to submit CD of the PDF file" "It would be nice to be able to preview the ETD once it has been uploaded, in particular to check links to other files to make sure they work correctly." "It would be useful if all machines in Virginia tech had word with pdf conversion facility" "Its great!!" "Just what is a/an ETD? It is not clear here." "Less difficult than expected." "More information about copyrights on the ETD web pages would be nicely, especially regarding what can and cannot be included in a thesis or dissertation with or without seeking permission from the original copyright holder. Additional information on fair use guidelines would be good." "Much cheaper than bound copies...great idea so that participants in my study can see my results." "My biggest problem was getting a password." "My submission is probably no satisfactory. I could not achieve pdf conversion of the back matter of my paper (diagrams, works cited, etc.) using the free trial version of Adobe pdf creator. Therefore, I uploaded pdf files for the parts of the paper that I could do so, and uploaded Word files for the remainder of the paper. I know I'll probably need to try again to submit the back section of my paper, but don't know what to try next, don't have access to a subscription to pdf creator, and will not have access to a computer to try again until Monday May 19. Please tell me what I need to do to finish the procedure." "NA" "Need to give precise directions on how to create ETD" "Need to provide free Acrobat Distiller for students to convert their MS word document to pdf document." "Need to update ETD cookies help section since Internet Explorer 6 has so many different settings -- many of which don't allow sections of the site to remain filled in after jumping to a new page to red help files. (cookie restriction must be set on "low" to work correctly)." "New Media Center needs more fonts." "New Media Center Staff very helpful! thank you." "No" - ( 3 responses) "no comment" "no comments" "No comments at this time." "No major problems. Seems lots easier than what my advisor had to go through." "None" - ( 6 responses) "none." "Not hard to do." "Once the file or files have been uploaded, it would be nice to be able to download them as well, to verify that what will get released really is what the student expects (for those of us who are paranoid!)." "Online submission tutorial was very helpful but still did not answer a few of the questions I had. Thank you." "Part of the submission form is repetive to the form you turn in to the grad school, except there are choices missing! I want to restrict my thesis to the VT community for 1 year and then release worldwide-- I chose this on the hard copy I turned in but that choice was not available during the submission process online. The submission form is bad-- if you mess up or click on a link it erases everything you just typed! And when you paste in your abstract all the tabs get removed... It seems like if you charge us $20 for "archiving fees" on top of everything else, that we should be able to bring theses and dissertations to an office and you upload them." "Personally, I just have looked at ETD format at almost the end of my writing, so I have to spend much time to reformat it. I think you should provide this information to a new student who just get into the new system of different school or higher level." "Please include more HTML codes when submitting the Abstract, such as the degree sign and Greek symbols. Also, allow the student to view a preview of the Abstract coded in HTML." "Please play up the importance of the New Media Center for those who are not electronically literate." "Postscript-to-PDF conversion tool did not work for .prn - may have been b/c using AOL dial-up, although tried from AOL Web browser and Internet Explorer Web browser, so there may have been a proxy server; had a friend convert from Microsoft Word to PDF." "Pretty smooth procedure. Did not encounter many problems beyond the conversion of my Word document to a pdf file. Ended up using PDFWriter rather than PDFDistiller." "Publishing online may be problimatic for those who want to publish some of their thesis in a scientific journal. Journals require that work be previously unpublished to be eligible for publication." "Quite easy........element K was very useful" "Rgarding the ETD submission site: It would be nice to be able to enter the information for several committee members at once, rather than one at a time with an extra link to follow in between." "Some days, I really, really hate Microsoft." "some links in ETD website can not be reached" "some of the information, especially regarding timelines for defending, submitting, etc. on the website was different in different places and different from information on the graduate school's website. it would be much easier for students to know what to do if the systems were coordinated!" "Some of the literature given to me conflicted with the info found on the website. Also the information on the website regarding the preperation of pdf files did not work." "Submitting the etd was easy. The hard part was getting my figures to display correctly. They would display correctly in PowerPoint, but not in Word. Then they displated correctly in Word, but not Adobe. One of the FAQs on the etd website should deal with display problems, and tell students that unless figures are in a recognized picture format (i.e., JPEGS) they may not display correctly in Adobe even if they do display in Word" "terrific. I am appreciative of having a web address for potential employers to visit to view my work. thank you." "Thanks for providing this platform." "Thanks for the "Submission Timeline" from the website. It was all I had to go by as there was no guidance offered from my department. Dennie is also very helpful in the Grad School." "Thanks!" "The $20.00 archiving fee is a bummer." "The directions for including files in addition to the etd.pdf file were confusing. I sent an email asking a question about them but did not get a response after waiting most of the day." "The ETD procedure described on the website is simple and proffessional." "The ETD site is helpful, but tedious to navigate. Great concept, and it works, but needs some work too. There are a lot of dead links and the adobe distiller program makes a lot less work. The website for pdf conversion did not work for me at all and was a waste of time. Make this clearer to people! Find Distiller! Screw the website!" "The ETD site was pretty useful. I think more information should be included on Latex. I used to the web to find answers to a lot of my questions." "The ETD website is well constructed for the students like me to submit thesis/dissertation easily. Thanks a lot!" "The most difficult problem for me was starting the page numbering for the Front on page iii. Page ii would have been much easier!" "The pages on the website do not fit the window or when you print you cannot print the page because it doesnot fit the window" "The process was a lot easier than I expected." "The rules governing the page numbering within the etd site is uncalled for. Why doesn't etd follow apa style guidelines which most papers are written in or very similar too." "The running speed in new media center of converting long word files to PDF is very slow and time consuming." "The section of the web site dealing with the actual submittal of the EDT seemed much more confusing and circuitous in its organization than it should have been. Also, the Web site fails to clarify when you should seek permission to reprint previously published material. If University policy requires signed permission in certain cases, this requirement should be clearly stated in the portion of the web site that deals with getting started on your ETD, not in the submitting your ETD section, since getting permission from a publisher can take several weeks. The copyright links provided were not helpful, and in fact, just seemed to confuse things more." "The site has lots of superfluities and tertiary information which cloud the core issue of submission." "The survey above is designed very poorly." "The tutorials are very helpful. I had some trouble numbering pages in different formats (Roman and then Arabic). A small tutorial can be added for advanced page numbering issues." "The website where you add files is very confusing. It should be made so that when you add a file you can see that you added it." "The workshop touted benefits of a multimedia ETD. However, when it came time to convert my thesis from Word to PDF, people who knew anything about Acrobat were had to find. The only comments I heard were "Oh, I guess there are some incompatibilities between Word and Adobe". Most of my links didn't make the conversion, and those that did were inconsistent. It simply is not practical to manually insert every link into the final ETD pdf file - there needs to be a way of doing it from Word; and PDFmaker is not the answer. Adobe may be great for text, but they've got work to do on the fancier stuff." "The workshops are very helpful and so are the staff." "There are bugs in the system (or maybe it just updates information too slow), which is what made this process frustrating. For example, after entering my advisor's info, I went to "Update committee info" to make sure I did it right and it was blank. I tried re-entering my advisor's info, but then was given the message, "An advisor with this name already exists." I clicked on "Update Committee Info" again and was given the message that there were no committee members. A similar problem occurred when I submitted files." "There is no phone number on the website for individuals who have questions to call. This might be a helpful addition." "There needs to be more concise and user friendly instructions from the graduate school. Conversion of files to pdf is not as easy as they make it out to be." "There should be a mention of how to include italics in the abstract when submitting the ETD. Also, none of the 3 ETD workshops I attended actually walked us through the submission process...we had the chance to ask questions and were given the website for more information, but overall the workshops were not very helpful in that regard." "this is a very confusing and time consuming loophole to jump through...." "This process was much more difficult than it needed to be. It is very unclear from the ETD website exactly what files are required. One should not have to attend a workshop to learn how to do something that should take about 15 minutes total. Consider a bulleted list of what's required and when, that links to how to create each file (for those who need it)." "This was a very easy process and thanks for all the instructions and tutorial. One suggestion is that include the file name formatting (no space) in the instruction." "This whole process was easy and pleasant. After all the work of courses and the dissertation, I must say that I dreaded this final requirement. But the tutorials on the website were excellent and very helpful. And, because the people at the Graduate College office were friendly and kind, that step was also pleasant. If my first attempt at submitting the etd is not accepted, I am not fearful of having to handle this alone. I have found everyone at VA Tech, from professors to other students to the business people to the college office to be absolutely wonderful; in fact, I have not had one bad encounter. And I have had six years to form this impression!" "Thus far it was much easier than expected, but ask me again after I get comments back from the person reading it." - ( 3 responses) "too electronic; there was no personal interaction and finding a voice/face to talk to was difficult" "Updated VT EDT website would be useful. The first info I found was from 1997 and had instructions on using WordPerfect for converting file to .pdf. This was confusing for me." "upload process is flawed and needs to be made compatible with IE 5 and above" "useful" "Useful feature for unlimited access through the internet. Very good concept" "Very convenient" "very good" "Very good!" "very helpful when trying to complete an ETD" "Very intuitive - I liked it." "Very smooth process." "way cool!" "When downloading files, it would be nice to have a progress bar." "Why is there an archiving fee when the entire thing is handled electronically? Will the thesis be printed?" "Word to PDF conversion is very poor when trying to include such things as cross reference links. I had to leave these out to get a viewable PDF." "Would be nice if links created in MS Word translated to PDF. My document was completely "wired", every figure reference connected to the figure, etc., but my PDF is *much* less exciting and interactive because I chose not to spend untold hours creating links by selecting things to link and going to the page. It was far too painful! Very unfortunate for those who wish to reference the document." "Would like to have had a full understanding that submitting an ETD was a requirement." "Yes, well the ETD website was helpful, but not entirely. The site makes it seem like you can only submit an ETD of you're on-campu--and this gave me some concern. I took an ETD course 3 years ago and my notes form that were most helpful in the end. My conversion of my dissertation into PDF went smoothly only because the Adobe website was offering a free trial of converting Word doc's directly into PDF format. And so, I took advantage of this free trial and it worked great! I think otherwise it would have been much more difficult to convert into PDF for me, mainly because I'm off-campus and don't have all of the software on my PC, etc.. Only other thing about ETD's is that it took a fair amount of time to make sure my format settings would be compatible with the PDF conversion process. And so, I think that it took longer than I expected to double-check and correct my thesis, based on the requirements set forth by the grad. school for ETD's." "You do not specify if the tables can be a smaller font than the text, as some tables will not all fit on one page" "You should have a tutorial on the website about making the second page # for the abstract not visible. This took a lot of time to figure out." "Your website hangs."
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