Today's researchers and scholars challenge the conventions of linear texts, one inch margins, and texts written for extremely narrow audiences. They integrate video, audio, animation, and graphics. They create interactive elements, including real-time video, online writing labs, and pivot tables. Graduate students defend proposals and dissertations online. At some universities, it is even possible to complete a dissertation without printing a word.
Faculty can serve on dissertation committees at universities distant from their home campuses.
Presently, graduate students can reach a significant reading audience, create interactive documents, and incorporate streaming video in their research presentations. The term ETD refers to a Master's thesis or doctoral dissertation that is archived electronically. Digital libraries of theses and dissertations enable a university widely to distribute the intellectual work of its graduates and to introduce its students to the Knowledge Age. At Virginia Tech, for example, many popular theses and dissertations have been downloaded thousands of times. As of October 1999, the most popular ETD at VT had been requested over 75,000 times.