Webinar: Blockchain Practice & Principles in Healthcare

Still from the blockchain webinar showing students conversing with each other in a circle of chairs The UNE Online Master of Science in Health Informatics program is happy to present this webinar bringing together three experts in the field of blockchain: Rob Dolci, President, and CEO of Aizoon USA, a technology company specializing in solving challenges through innovation by designing and developing software systems for smarter factories and more secure networks. Todd Kitchens, a University of New England graduate from the College of Osteopathic Medicine, who works as a physician and digital health expert in Maine. Sean Manion, CEO of Science Distributed, a science research company that develops systems of sharing and security through blockchain technology. We explore the world of blockchain as it applies to healthcare and its efforts to improve security measures… Read more >>
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Accessibility Helps Everyone

UNE Online Graduate Courses available globally One of the pillars of Universal Design Language, or UDL, is the idea that when you develop your instruction and assessments so they are accessible to a wide audience, including to those with sensory impairments, the results benefit everyone. This dynamic exists across modalities, such that the more we design for students with certain sensory needs, the more we benefit the whole of our student body. Adding images to your course content? Embed a description of the image using the “alt text” field (almost always editable when adding an image using an LMS’s content editor). One of the purposes of this field is to communicate to the visually impaired, through their screen readers, what content is being displayed in that… Read more >>
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Rich Internet Applications - Conversations and Mashup

Rich Internet Applications CLEAR’s RIAs Michigan State’s Center for Language Education And Research (CLEAR) has created a number of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) that can be used across a variety of disciplines. Because CLEAR is funded by a US Department of Education grant, the applications are free to use. Furthermore, they do not include annoying advertisements. As a world language instructor, I have used a number of these RIAs in both face-to-face and online classes, and have been very pleased with them. Although the RIAs were created for language classes, most of the tools can be used in other disciplines as well.  Conversations One of my favorite RIAs is Conversations. Instructors create a series of audio questions for students to answer. In world… Read more >>
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Engagement and Interactivity in Online Lectures: Exploring TED-Ed

Online Lecture Engagement In the best circumstances, a lecture attended in person is an exercise in engagement and interactivity as well as instruction. Understandably, this too is what we strive for in online education, but we are presented with additional hurdles. The instruction being given is prerecorded, has already happened, and cannot be influenced in real time by ideas in the classroom. Students are experiencing the content asynchronously, at the different times that are convenient to each of them. Students cannot ask follow-up questions while instruction is being given. In the same manner, the instructor cannot assess in-the-moment understanding of the instruction being given. There are a number of tools for addressing the challenges listed above, but one of the most important aspects… Read more >>
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YouTube Recording Directions

YouTube Recording Record on your device, then upload to YouTube As many of you already know, YouTube has basically discontinued supporting web cam capture. Instead, you are now expected to record a video in a different manner (you may still use your computer and the web cam, just not on the YouTube site), and then upload the ready-made movie to your channel. As there are several courses where we use YouTube, and where we were not able to replace the previous directions (typically, referring to “Video EveryWhere”), we are encouraging you to include this link in your announcements and refer students to this page. From now on, we will be updating this page only should there be any changes/improvements. Happy posting!
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Video Annotations and Discussions

faces with a play button as in video In our courses, we sometimes use videos as a prompt to start a discussion. The video is most likely to be included in the viewing section (aka Multimedia or Watch this), and possibly a link would be included in the prompt itself. It’s also possible to streamline the discussion flow by removing the permission to create a new thread on the student part. As creative as we can get when we push against Blackboard limitations, the result is not often optimal. I am going to show a couple of options where the interface is way friendlier. VideoAnt This is a good social tool for annotating videos. You may use it with your own video from YouTube or use other… Read more >>
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Kanopy Video Database

embed kanopy video The UNE Library supplies us, faculty students and staff, with a huge quantity of learning and entertainment materials. Mostly, we think of books when we think of these materials, or the vast online databases connecting us with scholarly articles from around the world. But there’s more to the library than what you can check out or download for reading. Kanopy is a database of videos, the variety of which will surprise you. To check it out, go to the UNE library’s website and click E-Resources, then Databases, then navigate to the only database whose title begins with the letter “K.” Kanopy’s library consists of a wide variety of streamable videos, comprising everything from old art-house films to recently released, award… Read more >>
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Captioning in Youtube

Captioning in YouTube In the interests of making the online Masters of Social Work program as accessible as possible, we’ve tried to make sure that all the video and audio content provided in the courses has, at the very least, transcripts. Above and beyond accessibility issues such as those involving hearing impaired students, transcripts are useful for students to print and take notes on, or for any students who want to “skim” the text of a presentation as a way of brushing up on it before a big test or paper submission. Video and audio are far more difficult to “skim.” The operative term in AV speak is called “scrubbing,” which anyone who has spent a few minutes hunting through a Youtube video… Read more >>
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Other Options for Presentations (and Some Tips on Doing Research)

How to Override a Grade 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 students to use when they are working on their research papers. So, here are two tools I have looked up. WeVideo Online video editing, free for personal accounts with limits of 15 min movies exported in 480p (small, low res movies). Better options, including sharing media to edit, and creating shared projects for a fee. Download WeVideo Moovly Animated… Read more >>
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What if students created viral videos as course projects?

Viral videos as assignments 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 great distribution, affected thousands of people and how they think? What if content was presented in a persuasive way, and had immediate impact? We can shoot for the stars, right? Truth is that a good story is part of the success. Viral by itself isn’t much, it has to have a message. But it also needs to be produced well. What if we could attract… Read more >>
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