I found the MPH program at UNE to be well designed for working professionals. I was able to keep my full-time position as a housing inspector while completing the program. I also greatly enjoyed my practical experience at the Maine CDC, which provided me with a new public health skill set that I will utilize in the future. Some Background…

I grew up in the Adirondacks of New York, in a small town with a big community. I did my undergraduate training at Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY where I finally realized my passion for health and medicine. I moved to Maine in 2010 and began my medical training that fall. In my second year of medical school, I decided…

With the recent developments, it looks like we are now able to set up email alerts for the events in your course that you want to keep track of. The switch happened to be turned on on Tuesday without a warning and your inbox may have been affected: all of a sudden, instructors and teaching assistants started receiving alerts from…

You know the word palimpsest? It is one of my favorites. It refers to a document on which more recent writing appears over older writing. The intent of such writing isn’t defined by the term itself–sometimes the newer writing is meant to deface the older writing (as with graffiti), sometimes to supplement it (as with JJ Abrams’ new book) but many…

The Public Health major at UNE presented me with a life changing opportunity during the summer of 2012. I traveled to Ghana, West Africa with about 20 people from the UNE community and beyond. We set up a health clinic and served over 100 people in and around the twin cities of Sekondi and Takoradi. The trip inspired a strong…

Contributing good feedback is a craft, and like any craft it is simultaneously distinct from and defined by the tools we use to practice it. Quality feedback can go through any communicative medium—text message; youtube comments section; a waxed string strung tautly between two paper cups—because the properties of good quality feedback are universal… Good feedback is honest Good feedback…

Word Clouds You may be quite familiar with word clouds (by Wordle or Tagxedo, although lots more options also exist: thing 1 and thing 2). A whole bunch of text is popped into a word cloud engine and then – boom! – you only get a handful of words (you control the number) which are usually the most frequently used…

Spell checking is available in Internet Explorer 10 and later versions, and current versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. Check the options for your web browser to learn more about how to use it to check spelling. To learn more about the browsers that are compatible with Outlook Web App, see Supported browsers for Outlook Web App. Spell check in…

If you have an hour, you will enjoy spending it going through this BB/QMa Conrad presentation on Tips and Best Practices to Create Effective Online Learning Experiences. It’s straightforward and clean, and addresses the following concepts: The Instructional Design Process (Formulate Objectives/Competencies>>Develop Assessment>>Specify Content and Strategies>>Choose Tools) tips on dealing with each the 21st Century Learner skills 10 Core Learning Principles Guiding…

It’s amazing how generous people can be with their creations! Pixabay is a website that hosts and allows you to download high-quality copyright-fee images that you can use and reuse any way you want! They don’t even require attribution, although that is always nice to mention. If your students are creating web pages or any other publishable materials, they may…

There has been this trend to map either individual stories or certain events, or works of fiction to bring them to life in geographical terms. The most obvious ways to use this would be to have students map out stories of their clients, clearly refugees, immigrants, and those who have moved a lot are best suited for this type of…

This week it’s an easy tip for those who often update their forms or other files in Blackboard. The first impulse is to go and edit the item/page and upload a file and link it. As a result, you will end up with two files in the file structure, the old one and the new one (however, if you keep…

We, the online folks, often have a running list of things to do, and our environment is such that we may be working in cafes, at home, at libraries, in hotels, you name it! Plus, the constant potential disruptions in the form of incoming Skype calls, emails, actual phone calls, meetings we need to attend, virtually or otherwise, and sudden…

Many of us, both students and instructors, are enrolled in several, or even dozens of courses. Here are some tips on how to manage the flow of Blackboard posts, notifications and the courses you see on the home page. To see how you can leverage the post stream from the Dashboard, view the video below. Please note that “@me” option…

When the Blackboard was updated, many instructors were thrilled to see the inline commenting feature which allowed them to pinpoint their comments to a particular line or even word when grading an assignment. Did you know that Google Docs has a similar feature and it’s one of the best uses of Google Docs for collaboration? How it can be used:…

We often view copyright as a nuisance, and it may be in certain instances. But along with protecting the rights of the owners and creators of intellectual property, copyright provides for rights of users to view, distribute, modify and do other things with certain materials for a fee or free of charge (such as under Fair Use). Fair Use guidelines start…

At a request of a faculty member, I have been researching some video presentation options beyond the standard Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. I began my research in Google Docs (Google Drive). If you have never done it, you should at least give it a shot. You will like it. In fact, you may like the Research Tool enough to share with your…

This may be the perfect time to address some of the issues that will eliminate issues down the road. If you have been using the Retention Center (which, by the way, is quite awesome!), you will notice that as your library of courses grows, so does the number of notifications coming from them, alerting you that your students haven’t logged…

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…

Finding copyright free images is a challenge, and also essential. We are no strangers to taking advantage of efficiencies, so we are proudly presenting someone else’s handiwork here, for you may find it hugely helpful. This article in The Chronicle of Higher Education explains how to filter your image search results in Google Search based on rights to reuse. As…