Technologies that support learning and research

Lesson 4

While there are numerous ways to craft documents, we recommend that you download Office 365.  Remember, you MUST use your student email address so that you can access these resources.  Doing so will allow you access to Outlook, Word, Excel, and other web-based apps.   These are compatible with both PCs and Macs, and across multiple machines/devices.

  Now that you were able to download the Microsoft Office 365 Suite, let’s work on getting some other items in place. While the following module introduces Qualtrics, SPSS, NVivo, Grammarly, and RefWorks, you won’t need access to the first three until later in your coursework. However, getting familiar with each program will mean that you’re ahead of the curve when the time comes! You can use Grammarly and Refworks in all of your courses, however!  Remember, Grammarly will help you with punctuation, spelling, sentence structure, and other writing issues in Microsoft Word, and RefWorks is a wonderful way to collect and store any resources that you use from the library or course research.

Your Office 365 student email account is your main source of communication with anyone in the University. You can expect to receive the following types of communication from the University through your student email account:

1. Course registration emails.

2. Assignment submission emails.

3. Welcome emails from faculty members.

4. Direct responses to communication with your faculty team members or team members.

5. Important announcements and communications from the University.

6. A daily summary of activity that occurred within The Commons.

It is important to remember that this email account is the primary way your faculty members will contact you. You will want to check this email account on a daily basis so that you can keep in touch with your faculty and be aware of any important changes within the University. We recommend utilizing the features of Office 365 by installing it on your mobile device, or forward your emails to a personal email account that you use every day.

Your Office 365 account includes several web based apps including Outlook email, Word, and Excel. In addition to the web-based Office apps, you can download and install the full versions of the Office products for PC and Mac on up to five machines, free of charge from your Office 365 Dashboard.

To access your Office 365 email account and apps, locate the Office 365 widget on your NCUOne homepage.

Your Office 365 account alsoincludes several web-based apps such as Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, etc. You can download and install the full versions of the Office products for PC and Mac on up to five machines, free of charge from your Office 365 Dashboard.

Kaltura, Turnitin, and Academic Honesty

Let’s talk about creativity, the creation of videos, and academic honesty.  Academic honesty is not just for the written word!  The following modules will introduce you to Kaltura, and Turnitin. Remember that anything that is not yours, nor is common knowledge, must be appropriately cited, including images, charts, graphs, and more. You will be creating content in many of your courses, and this may include PowerPoints, videos, blogs, podcasts, and more. If you use another’s work in any form, it must have appropriate documentation; else it will fall under the realm of plagiarism as you learned about in Module 1.  

Kaltura  is a way of capturing and creating voice-over videos. You have the option to do voice-over only or capture yourself via audio and visual as you present material. Often, we use this to accompany a slide deck of some kind (e.g., PowerPoint). It’s also something that you’ll see faculty use to record audio/video feedback on your assignments.    Turnitin  is a way to measure academic honesty. This program allows you to run your work through its AI system to check for plagiarism. You'll see this most often in your courses as a courtesy “pre-check,” but it’s also used in the dissertation itself.  You may be curious about how self-plagiarism impacts the Similarity Score – and the answer is a bit complicated. We understand that some research processes (e.g., thesis, dissertation) are iterative in nature, so rest assured you’ll work with your faculty member when it comes time for that.

What is Turnitin?

Turnitin is a plagiarism prevention service. Turnitin’s database includes the world’s largest collection of internet, academic, and student paper content. Thanks to Turnitin’s unparalleled index of archived student papers (929 million and counting) student collusion, i.e., the improper sharing of work both within and across institutions, is discouraged. Additionally, 67 billion web pages and 178 million journal articles and subscription content sources, protects against search engine plagiarism and helps ensure originality of research papers, theses, and dissertations by comparing them to online and offline subscription content.

When you submit your essay based assignments to dropbox in NCUOne, they will automatically be run through Turnitin. You have full access to the Turnitin originality report. Simply click on the percentage (similarity index) number to open the Turnitin report in a new window. Please note that the similarity index represents all text matches including references, direct quotes, etc. View the report to determine what matches need to be resolved.

Having issues viewing the Turnitin originality report? Contact Service Desk or your AFA.

Northcentral University’s IT Service Desk is available via email or phone 24x7x365 to provide technical assistance for students, faculty and staff.

To contact the Service Desk, you can email [email protected] or call (888) 628-1567.

 

If you are looking for tutorials or guidance on NCU portals or processes, please visit the Center for Teaching and Learning’s resources, located in The Commons. They are regularly posting new content as well as updating existing content so the most up to date information is provided. You can find them by going to this link.

You can also find them by clicking on the Center for Teaching and Learning link located on your Home Page.

*Please note there is reduced support staff on major holidays as well as between the hours of 7:00 PM and 6:00 AM, M-F, 8:00 PM and 6:00 AM Sat and 12:00 AM – 6:00 AM on Sundays, AZ Time so response times may be slower than usual. Please be patient as we respond to every request submitted!

 Academic Success Center

The NU Academic Success Center (ASC) collaborates with faculty to support students through the process of learning and developing their identities as scholars and practitioners. In addition to supporting students in developing their written communication and quantitative reasoning (math and statistics) skills, we provide support in the areas of research methodology, design, and analysis. The ASC’s holistic tiers of support are designed to provide each student with a personalized, meaningful learning experience. We align our resources to meet the academic skill and competency needs identified by faculty as crucial to successfully completing a course of study.

Qualtrics, SPSS, and NVivo  are three research resources that we offer to all students. Qualtrics is a web-based platform for conducting survey research, and creating your survey instrument(s). If you’ve heard of Google Forms or Survey Monkey, this is the academic version, and many of our research students use it to host their surveys on, or use it to garner participants.  Qualtrics is a versatile tool, and can link to your calendar, and produce various reports to get you started with analysis, be it in Microsoft Excel as a .xls(x) file, or in SPSS format, as a .sav file.  To get started, please email the request for a Qualtrics account to the Office of Planning and Institutional Effectiveness at [email protected]. The request should include your name and university email address.      That brings us to SPSS . As noted above, Qualtrics and SPSS work well together in terms of file sharing.  SPSS is the recommended software for statistical analysis. While SPSS will not tell you what analysis to run, with the correct inputs, it will perform them for you; from basic descriptive statistics, to inferential statistics needed in quantitative research. We offer this software free of charge to students, and it is located  in the University Services Module, under the Student Technology Resource Center.  You'll need to access the Student Webstore and enter in your credentials if needed. Remember, use your university email!  Keep in mind that we also offer SPSS tutoring, and group sessions through our Academic Success Center!    Last but not least is NVivo  – our preferred qualitative data analysis tool. NVivo allows you to upload transcripts or other qualitative data, and assists you with qualitative data analysis processes such as coding. While NVivo will not do your coding for you, it will provide the systems and backdrop to streamline your work, help you visualize your data, and walk you through the processes involved such as creating codes, categories, and themes. It’s useful for lots of qualitative research designs, and like SPSS, we offer training and sessions on NVivo, hosted by our Academic Success Center!

For self-editing and proofreading, one option for students is to use Grammarly, the automated grammar checker. Grammarly develops essential writing skills by helping students revise their papers and providing automated instructional feedback. National University provides students with a premium Grammarly subscription. To sign up for this service, please follow the directions below.

Note: All NU Grammarly users need to use their University email so that we can ensure that users are active students, faculty, and staff.

*Please be sure to use Grammarly at least once every 90 days. Unused accounts are deleted quarterly.

Creating Your Premium Grammarly Account

1. Select this link to Sign Up for Grammarly Services:  https://www.grammarly.com/edu/signup.

2. DO NOT select Continue with Google.

3. Enter your information as shown.

4. Select Sign Up.

Student Success is  the central pillar of the university’s strategic plan, and the foundation of ASC’s mission to develop scholars and practitioners. The goal of this service is to provide students with a trustworthy alternative to hiring outside editors who might not be familiar with our institution's process or overcharge for their services. The Academic Success Center proofreaders understand the expectations of the dissertation process and are only focused on your success. 

All ASC proofreaders have earned doctoral degrees and are experienced in supporting diverse writing needs. Let our team of APA experts be the trustworthy resource you need. From citation requirements to heading hierarchy, from passive voice to verb tense, and from unclear antecedents to anthropomorphisms; we can help.