Last week at UNE Online’s first ever Online Learning Symposium         , I had the opportunity to share our goal of creating learning experiences and assessments that are not only rigorous and research-based, but also authentic to real work and real life, so that when our students leave us, they have the tools to use their knowledge…

Education Legislation Through the Decades In December of 2015, President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which replaced the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2002.  This reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) attempted to address some of the issues that made No Child Left Behind a source of challenge and frustration for many…

You could say it’s in her DNA. An Oklahoma Sauk Native, Dee Manatowa inherited her passion for social work along with a devotion to environmental justice. Her father—the late Chief Elmer Manatowa Jr. of the Sac and Fox Nation in Stroud, Oklahoma—instilled in her a love for all people and the Earth. As a tribal member, Dee knows all too…

Dr. Jayne Pelletier is the Director of Accreditation and Policy for the College of Graduate and Professional Studies (CGPS). She oversees the accreditation process and policy development to support the operational and academic processes of online programs. In short, Dr. Pelletier makes sure we are compliant with accreditation standards and that we provide an outstanding education to students. This post…

Social work and human trafficking are linked in that social workers have a unique and valuable role in the fight against human trafficking, helping victims and fostering a greater understanding around the issue. Victims of human trafficking A 15-year-old runaway in a rural roadside motel. A middle-aged man picking tomatoes in a Georgia field. A twenty-something woman babysitting children at…

The most recent update to Blackboard, over break, included an update to its inline grading functionality. To cover the new features in this tool—which allows for student work to be read, graded, and even commented on within Blackboard, without forcing you to download—we turned to our fearless peers, Susan Graham-Rent and Susan Hyde, who delivered an excellent webinar on the…

PDFs (Portable Document Format), with their platform-neutral openability and read-only format, have become one of our most useful tools for saving and sharing documents, and are a common feature in online as well as face-to-face courses (read this article for more on the interesting history of PDFs). However, they can present challenges for some users, especially for those who are…

What are the next steps after sex trafficking or domestic violence? Social workers help people regain their independence and reintegrate into society after escaping domestic violence or sex trafficking. How social workers help those who’ve escaped domestic violence or sex trafficking make the transition and heal For people who have experienced sex trafficking or domestic violence, escaping their dangerous circumstances…

UNE Online’s Graduate Programs in Public Health (GPPH) recently held our first Volunteer Week challenge! Our goal was to encourage UNE students and public health professionals everywhere to facilitate meaningful community service activities with a public health focus. The UNE GPPH community shared photos of how they gave back this season, and we created a special Facebook album, titled #uneonlinegivesback…

Recently, Leanne DiMaio was asked to be the subject matter expert and course designer for a brand new course within the Masters of Science in Applied Nutrition program, ‘Nutrition, Wellness, and Multimedia Communication.’ Leanne has been a course facilitator in the UNE Online MPH program since 2012, directly after graduating from the MPH program herself. She earned her MBA from…

The University of New England has been named to Forbes’ list of America’s Top Colleges, a list that Forbes says is “The 600+ schools well worth the investment.” Forbes bases their list of the top schools on each school’s output, or in other words, what students are getting out of their college education in terms of earning power, student satisfaction,…

APHA 2017 was a HUGE success! This year the American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting and Expo was held in Atlanta, GA and there were more than 12,000 public health professionals from around the world in attendance, including our very own UNE Online Graduate Programs in Public Health (GPPH) faculty, staff, students and alumni. This year’s Annual Meeting theme…

A good story generally contains the following elements: Protagonist: The hero (or anti-hero) of the narrative. Central premise: The argument or thesis of the story. Backstory: The context of the story. Conflict: The challenges faced by the protagonist. Narrative arc: The chronological movement of the story. Should any of these be missing, readers will find the story lacking, though they…

One of my favorite features on my iPhone is the Maps App. I lost my beloved DeLorme Atlas & Gazetteer several moves (and states) ago. I don’t have a GPS in my car. I’ve often found myself lost in many an unfamiliar part of a town when traveling for work or even pleasure. There is something very comforting in saying,…

Back in March, my colleague Olga wrote about authentic assessment. In her post, she noted “you scaffold the assignments (activities) and put together course materials necessary to help students do their best in achieving the desired result.” In this Vision post, we’ll take a look at how scaffolding and formative assessment can foster student success throughout your courses. Together, scaffolding and…

Final projects make or break a course. A good final project incorporates everything the student has learned in the course. It lends structure and meaning to the assignments that precede it, and it offers the student a chance to demonstrate mastery of course material in a way that is authentic to the subject matter. In an introductory nutrition course, for…

In past posts, we have discussed how to create rubrics, why we use rubrics at UNE, and how to use rubrics in Blackboard. This particular post will focus on the different types of rubrics one may encounter and what they look like. There are three main types of rubrics: holistic, analytic, and a love child of the two that we’ll…

We have been talking on and off about essential questions with Chris. Just the other day, because I am facilitating an online course about online course development (yup, I am!), a participant in the course submitted a syllabus with an essential question in it, and this was such a joyous moment that I had to capitalize on it and spread…

An inclusive environment is not easy to define. When looking for colleges, whether online or the more traditional brick and mortar, many students look at tangible areas. Questions often asked are: ‘How much will this cost?’ ‘How long is the program?’ ‘Are there residency requirements?’ ‘Is there a decent professor to student ratio?’ The list goes on and on. One…

The University of New England has been recognized as one of the best online graduate schools by OnlineMastersPrograms.org for Best Online Master’s Programs in 2015. UNE achieved top rankings for both the Master of Public Health and Master of Social Work programs. The Best Online Graduate Programs ranking is valuable because it assists potential post-secondary online students in finding what they need to identify a…

UNE’s Online College of Graduate and Professional Studies continues to shine with its latest appearance on a list of the 50 Most Affordable Online Graduate Schools for Master’s Degrees, released by Best Masters Programs. Best Masters Programs is an online guide offering reviews and rankings of top online master’s degree programs. According to Best Masters Programs, the universities and colleges…

Creating viral videos on purpose? It might just work! Sure, writing papers is academically significant and is a way to demonstrate understanding, analysis, and such. No question that putting together a website is collaborative and there are opportunities to make changes after peers offer feedback on the project. But, what if good videos carried a good message – and through…