CAST: About Universal Design for Learning. We at MSW are very ambitious about making sure that our course design offers learning opportunities to diverse students, not the proverbial “middle”, or only fully-abled English as-a-native-language speaking students. By including additional content formats (transcripts for videos and audio, alternate text for images for example), we open opportunities for students who may either need assistance…

The College of Graduate and Professional Studies, the Center for the Enrichment of Teaching and Learning, and the Student Academic Success Center, came together to weigh in on the benefits of assignment and course scaffolding, as discussed in the video below.

How many online accounts do you have? How many passwords? I have over 99. I’d be more specific about the number but I don’t want to count them, and the counter in my PW Manager Dashboard only goes so high. Admittedly, I probably have more accounts than most faculty and administrators. My job involves experimenting with online tools and teaching teachers how…

Google Drive has been instrumental in streamling the process of storing and sharing files, especially in document-intense courses like Field Seminars and Practica. While there are a number of advantages to setting up our system this way, there has been some difficulty navigating around the shared folders as they don’t always feel intuitive for a particular task. All of the…

Thanks to another mention by FreeTech4Teachers.com, I have looked into this Analyze My Writing engine. In the past we have talked about Wordle and Tagxedo, which are both fine word cloud generators, which in addition to making long pieces of text look pleasant, highlight most commonly used words in a chunk of text. The idea behind these is that you…

What is Instructional Design? Very broadly, Instructional Design is the process by which instructional materials are designed, developed, and delivered. It’s the job of the Instructional Designer to coordinate learning experiences that are efficient, effective, and appealing. The terms instructional design, instructional technology, educational technology, curriculum design, and instructional systems design (ISD), are often used interchangeably. Instructional design also involves…

Congratulations to John Gale, one of UNE’s adjunct faculty members in the Graduate Programs in Public Health! John was selected to be presented with the 2015 NRHA Volunteer of the Year Award at NRHA’s 38th Annual Rural Health Conference on April 16 in Philadelphia. About the NRHA The National Rural Health Association (NRHA) is a national nonprofit membership organization with more than 20,000…

After going through UNE’s flexible online MPH program, Alexjandro Daviano received his MPH from the University of New England this past December. Here is a little of what Alexjandro had to say about his UNE Online Public Health Programs experience: “My MPH degree at UNE really changed my mind on the career path I’ve chosen, and truly opened my eyes…

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…

One of the most powerful differences between printed text and digital text, as we’ve already covered, is the ability to annotate in the margins as you would a physical book. We’ve talked about tools that allow you to annotate screenshots, and tools that allow you to curate, then annotate, webpages and articles–now, I want to cover a tool, and point…

Among the things that online students point out as the most important to success are time management and staying motivated (see all the seven factors listed in this Educause article). Clearly, it’s easy to get side-tracked if you don’t have to go to a class at a particular scheduled time – remember this was actually the best thing about asynchronous classes…

While online students face many of the same problems as traditional students on the ground, a different sort of concern can be raised out of the convenience that a fully online degree program can afford. What is it? It’s called CVS. Computer Vision Syndrome, not to be mistaken with the lines of pharmacies, is the name for any host of optical…

Over the last year, with the smoother integration of YouTube videos into the Blackboard system (such as Vide Everywhere, aka Record from Webcam), we have used the video features extensively and in an increasing number of courses. There are admittedly lots of advantages to taking courses online, but cultivating a robust community remains a challenge in distance education. So, using…

Genetics lecture and lab now offered online This new and academically-challenging undergraduate level online genetics course, BIOL 1040, with online lab will examine transmission genetics, molecular genetics, cytogenetics, evolutionary genetics, molecular medicine, and developmental genetics. Students will learn from examples drawn from the scientific literature, which stress modern technological and experimental methodologies used in studying the genetics and genomics of…

At first, I wanted to write about Arts and Social Work, but that was quite a bit of a stretch as I was only going to tell you guys about a very cool Google Chrome extension (only works in Chrome, of course) called “Google Art Project”. It can enrich your web browsing experience by opening a beautiful piece of art…

This is not how online students study. Except for the screaming. That may sometimes occur. Studying as an online student The traditional student cram session, as it appears in the movies, takes place in a checked-out library study room, books piled high to either side of one disheveled, hangdog face. Maybe some of us have put ourselves in exactly this…

Watch the complete webinar recording on Preventing Plagiarism and SafeAssign.  

We have already touched upon the subject of feedback, and its peculiar and often subjective qualities and content. Today we resume the topic of feedback and challenge you to an exercise in feedback. We know that good feedback is always contextual, and is often tricky. Some of the trickiness is in the object of the feedback. Usually, it’s easy to…

Instructors often like to have control over student group assignment. Sometimes, it matters not who is where, but a rather quick assignment is needed. While there is absolutely no way to change the type of the group set already created (at present), it’s possible to have the system randomly assign all the students (more or less evenly) across all the…

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…

Former colleagues of mine, Robert Prince and Owen Guthrie of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, developed a journalism course wherein the professor constructed the lesson plan to mimic the internal organization of a struggling newspaper. The students in the course were new hires looking to climb the professional ladder he’d constructed for them, from intern all the way up to…

The University of New England has been named to Forbes‘ list of America’s Top Colleges for 2014, a list that Forbes says is based on “output” and “return on investment.” Forbes‘ acknowledgment of the value of a University of New England degree follows similar recognition by Affordable Colleges Online, a website reporting on higher education affordability, which recently ranked UNE second…

We will be shifting gears today a bit, and will feature a social work article authored by Leslie Yaffa and Amy Storch on their ‘Social Work in the Caribbean‘ course and their experiences in Jamaica with a cohort of online students who came together for the first time. http://www.nyu.edu/classes/keefer/waoe/yaffal.pdf If any of you would like to share a social work…

When do you NOT need to go through admissions? UNE Online’s Science Prerequisites for Health Professions classes are our exception to the admissions process rule. They do not require an admissions process at all. Simply log in, register for the class, pay, and begin on the first or third Wednesday of the month.  All of our classes are instructor-led, high-quality courses. They are…