At the June 12th Regent’s meeting, it was approved that in-state, resident, Nebraska students can be charged a higher tuition rate for a distance/online course. The higher tuition rate will apply to our UNL “S” courses. Our “X,” “H,” and open-enrollment course are not impacted by the increase. The goal is to provide additional funding to academic units to provide support for online courses.

Details on the increased rates are being defined by Central Administration and will be announced soon. The new rates will go into effect for Fall 2009.

The Department of Nutrition and Health Sciences is offering a new online graduate specialization that fulfills a need for Registered Dietitians. All courses are available online. The specialization is an area of study within the 36 credit hour Master of Science in Nutrition and Health Science.  UNL is able to offer the program through its partnership with the Great Plains Interactive Distance Education Alliance (GP-IDEA), a consortium of 11 research universities offering joint, online graduate programs.  

Learn more about the Dietetics Specialization within the Master of Science in Nutrition and Health Sciences.

Dr. Jenelle Reeves, Assistant Professor in the Department of Teaching Learning & Teacher Education in the College of Education and Human Sciences, has taught a number of distance courses using a wide variety of online tools and strategies to enhance her student’s engagement, sense of community, and in-depth understanding of the course content. For example, Dr. Reeves pairs students within a blog so that they can carry on intense, focused short-term discussions on such subjects as motivation in language learning and language learning in the movies. In addition, she makes a point of matching small group discussions with individual assignments to ensure deeper learning of the subject matter.

During her four years at UNL, Dr. Reeves’ research and teaching focus has been on teacher reasoning in multilingual classrooms. Her research has appeared in TESOL Quarterly, Linguistics and Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, and the Journal of Educational Research. Prior to receiving her PhD from the University of Tennessee, Dr. Reeves taught English in Japan, Korea, and the U.S.

Tracie Chapo, the author for our new Independent Study High School Biology series (which was featured in a previous newsletter) has won Nebraska’s 2009 Outstanding Biology Teacher Award. Her experiences as a course author for us was cited as an example of her willingness to undertake new challenges while reaching out to all students in new and exciting ways. The award will be presented to Tracie during a special luncheon at the 2009 National Association of Biology Teachers Conference November 11–14 in Denver, CO. She will also receive a pair of world-class field binoculars and a microscope.