Month: January 2015

Many waited outside the doors of the Zion Room on the fifth floor of the Holland Centennial Commons Friday morning as the board of trustees began the open session of its meetings.

After an introduction and welcoming of guests, members of the board began the session by honoring now-retired Don Hinton, dean of the school of humanities, with an excellence in education award.

“This isn’t an award we give lightly,” trustee Elisabeth Bingham said.

Following a short speech by Hinton, Debra Bryant, assistant professor of business, presented the results of a survey called “Great Colleges to Work For,” which measures responses given to questions distributed to the faculty at Dixie State University about the quality of their jobs.

“I think one of the signs of being a great college is that you ask your employees how you’re doing,” Bryant said.

Dixie’s scores on the survey met the national average but didn’t quite live up to the highest standard: the honor roll.

After reviewing the survey’s numbers, President Biff Williams gave the president’s report.

“We do a lot of amazing things at [DSU],” Williams said. “But we don’t brag about ourselves enough, and that’s one culture that I would like to change.”

Williams announced a new student housing building would soon be breaking ground.

The trustees listened to seven program proposals and approved the restructuring of the communication department including new multimedia and social media emphases.

The physical education/recreation program in the department of family and consumer sciences will also see a change as it moves to the school of health sciences with more programs to follow shortly.

The board also heard reports devoted to investments, finances, various committees and building prospects as well as a listing of events scheduled for the coming months.

Visit Dixie’s website to view the detailed agenda of the meeting. The next board of trustees meeting will be held March 20. 

Something every college student eventually has to do is choose a major.

The Career Center has many great tools to helP students decide on a major, including an aptitude test and career counselors, Career Services Director Ali Threet said.

Threet said sometimes it takes option after option before somebody decides what is right for them; it is better to start early. 

“If you quickly choose something during your freshman year then you can get started somewhere,” Threet said. “If you choose early you can explore more options, and you have a better idea of what you might want to do.”

August Barlow, a junior biology major from Hildale, has changed his major three times. He recently changed from a pre-med to a biology major because pre-med is not offered at Dixie State University. Barlow said he did have to take extra classes after adding a medical emphasis.

The Career Center can give students an idea of what might be right for them. At the Career Center, there are advisers who students can meet with who will help get the ball rolling. It also offers aptitude tests that can give students a better idea of what direction to head in.

Having an understanding of what a student might want to do really helps in choosing a major, and Threet said choosing a major is the hard part.

David Roos, executive director of enrollment services, said it doesn’t only cost money but time when students change their majors.

“When looking into changing your major there are many great tools on the Dixie website that can help you with your decision,” Roos said. “There is Degree Works inside your MyDixie that will let you do a ‘what if’ analysis. You can look and see what would happen if you were to change your degree.”

The ‘what if’ analysis tool is a great way to see how changing your major will affect you before you actually decide to do it, Roos said.

Students who are interested in taking the aptitude test can do so at Dixie.edu/career. Threet encouraged students to talk with a career counselor, before and after, in order to better understand the aptitude test and results.

The tutors at the Dixie State University Writing Center are changing the format of their instructional writing workshops this spring to reach out to more students.

The new, hour-long workshops scheduled for the spring are going to be half tutor-led presentations and half audience engagement. Lauren Jo Sypniewski, the Writing Center coordinator and English instructor, said she hopes the new interactive format of the workshops will help bring more people to the Writing Center to get help.

“These workshops are going to be pretty fun and informational,” Sypniewski said. “[Students] will get to learn directly from their peers. They can communicate with [the tutors] at a different level than if they were trying to get help from their professors.”

The workshops focus on various topics including how to prewrite effectively, creating a strong thesis, writing with an active voice, résumé and professional writing for careers, writing cohesive introductions and conclusions, and using punctuation correctly.

The workshops will be held at different times each week to try to cater to the most students possible, unlike past semesters where the workshops were at the same time each week, Sypniewski said. The workshops are located in the Holland Centennial Commons. The schedule for the spring workshops can be found at dixiewritingcenter.com.

The first workshop will be at noon on Wednesday, Feb. 4. Each workshop is presented by a different tutor to ensure variety.

Dexter Humphreys, a senior communication major from Hatch, will be facilitating the workshop on structuring introductions and conclusions in April.

“It’s a really small setting so it can be really hands-on and involved,” Humphreys said. 

At the workshops following the presentation, attendees will be putting their new skills to the test by practicing their writing. That way, the tutors can help all the students individually and give them specific feedback.

Humphreys said he feels like the workshops are going to be helpful for all the students who attend.

“[The workshops] are important because a lot of students … do not know some of these specific skills we will be working on and don’t know where to get help,” Humphreys said. “This is a really easy way for everyone to improve their writing.”

Like sketchy Tinder dates and Ramen Noodles, there’s another aspect of college life students will inevitably experience: using the Turnitin system in their courses.

Turnitin is third-party product that compares writing assignments to those of other students, Internet databases and journals and periodicals. The program allows instructors to spot similarities between papers students submit and information online that could assist them in determining if academic dishonesty has occurred.

With Turnitin now a prominent influence at Dixie State University, common criticisms, like its inability to differentiate accidental and intentional plagiarism, and rumors that students can “game” the Turnitin system don’t hold enough merit to invalidate its effectiveness, said Chris Harrick, Turnitin vice president of marketing.

Jared Johnson, director of IT instructional support services, said 2014-15 marks the second academic year Turnitin has been integrated into Dixie State University’s Canvas system for faculty use. In fall semester alone, 379 instructors used the service for their courses, 4,630 students submitted assignments into Turnitin, and 23,122 total submissions from DSU entered the system.

Johnson said one misconception people might have about Turnitin is that it alerts instructors about cases of academic dishonesty. However, it only provides instructors with information — like the percentage of an assignment similar to online content — that could help them find questionable student practices.

“It is decided by the faculty member what and how they judge plagiarism,” Johnson said. “ … [Turnitin] doesn’t say plagiarism has occurred … Instructors would probably wait until a certain threshold to decide to check for plagiarism.”

Psychology assistant professor Kristine Olson said she uses Turnitin for her courses, but rather than relying on the system to spot every case of possible academic dishonesty, she utilizes it as a learning tool to teach students about ways to avoid plagiarism. 

And that’s the best use for Turnitin, Harrick said.

“Using Turnitin as a ‘gotcha’ tool is not a best practice as the hope is students can learn and grow from small mistakes rather than be punished for one big mistake,” Harrick said. “Instructors should be talking to their students about the importance of originality and citations; creating assignments that are difficult to plagiarize; and exposing students to tools like Turnitin in a risk-free manner so they understand that if they plagiarize, they will most likely face consequences.”

Harrick said classifying Turnitin as a learning tool rather than a manic, accusatory cheating detector helps both instructors and students learn from it.

However, Turnitin’s success across the 10,000 learning institutions it serves indicates it also reduces plagiarism, he said.

“We’ve measured the levels of unoriginal content submitted to our service over time and have found that, on average, institutions reduce levels of unoriginal content by 40 percent over five years of use,” Harrick said.

Johnson said the fact that at DSU only eight Canvas support tickets (alerts about issues with online services) in regards to Turnitin have been submitted since its implementation — mostly technical — highlights its benefits.

Canvas also helps instructors combat cheating, he said. 

“Canvas is powerful for suspected cheating because instructors can go into Canvas and can pull up students’ usage … ,” Johnson said. “They can look at analytics on students, their access reports for Canvas, and can see when students logged in last, and how much time they’ve spent in one tool.”

Both Johnson and Harrick said Turnitin is unique in its ability to keep up with both technology and the rumored methods of students beating it.

Turnitin’s ever-growing database continually improves its effectiveness, Harrick said.

“In terms of newer methods of academic dishonesty, one of the most powerful aspects of our service is our content database, which consists of 50 billion web pages, over 500 million student papers and millions of text books, newspapers and magazines,” he said. “This growing corpus of information is continually broadening our ability to detect unoriginal content.”

New technologies’ impact on DSU’s campus make the service crucial, Johnson said; students enroll in online classes, research online and, now, Turnitin’s system both teaches them how to avoid academic dishonesty and underscores the consequences of plagiarism.

“We’re in the digital age, and so to keep up with that we have to be able to combat that, and that’s where Turnitin’s role comes into play,” he said. 

Reporter Mykell Swapp spoke to Dixie State University students about what makes them unique.