Using UMassOnline

Nutrition for a Healthy Lifestyle Online runs through the Amherst campus of the UMassOnline network (http://amherst.umassonline.net ). There you will find a link to Vista for the course.  A username and password will be provided once you enroll.

Online Course Navigation

Once inside the course Web site, you will see links to the learning modules Welcome-Begin Here, Getting Off to a Great Start, and Unit 1. Other Units will open up each week.

Interaction in the course will primarily be online in the Discussions area.  Participants will be divided into small groups for some assignments.  All participants are expected to read each other's work and respond online, as this is our main form of communication.

Vista also allows for real-time Chat and has a Mail area so you can email fellow participants and instructors.  Finally, there is a My Grades grade book so you can monitor your progress through the course.

The Getting Off to a Great Start learning module also include several links that will help you in this course.  One link is to a discussion called Frequently Asked Questions.  You can use this discussion at anytime to ask questions of a general nature so everyone in the course will benefit from your question and its answer. 

There is also a discussion called the Virtual Cafe.  This is an open area where you can interact informally with others, post questions to fellow participants, or post current events or news related to nutrition and health.

Submitting and Saving Your Work

The majority of your work will be submitted either by answering questions posed in the course Discussions or by uploading Rich Text Format (.rtf) documents you create in your word processing program into the course Assignments. This may sound confusing at first, but I will guide you step-by-step and you will soon find yourself capable and confident with the course technology.  If you have any trouble uploading documents to the course Discussions or Assignments, you can email them to the instructor as an attachment.

And speaking of course documents, now is a good time to start a folder on your computer where you can save all the documents you create for this course plus any documents that we share with you such as the weekly course notes and files with content or other information.