Short presentation by Stacey Rosenberg of SNHU about their D2L Excellence Award winning program titled Higher Education and Real-world Training (HEaRT)
2. Background/SNHU Demographics
• Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU)
• Over 135,000 online students
• Reinventing higher education to fit the needs of today's students and
workforce
• Provides unparalleled support and service
3. HEaRT Highlights
• A free, innovative, asynchronous experiential learning opportunity
• Team based with a global perspective
• Addresses need for internships and development of career necessary skills
• Learners analyze best practices and current evidence to solve the employer’s
concern
4. Results
• Significant impact on GEM
learners
• Completion rate of close to
50%
• Experience rated as an
8.3/10
• Over 89% would
recommend the model
6. References
Busteed, B., & Auter, Z. (2017). Why colleges should make internships a requirement. Gallup
Blog. Retrieved from https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/222497/why-colleges-
internships-requirement.aspx
Jobvite. (2017). Recruiter nation report. Retrieved from https://www.jobvite.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/09/Jobvite_2017_Recruiter_Nation_Report.pdf
National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). (2017). The class of 2017 student
survey report. Retrieved from
https://www.naceweb.org/uploadedfiles/files/2017/publication/executive-summary/2017-
nace-student-survey-executive-summary.pdf
7. 7
Jan Wyatt
Assistant VP Nursing,
Health Professions &
Academic
Administration
Toni Clayton
Executive Director
Health Professions
Laurie Lewis
Early Engagement
Partner
Marcy Vadurro
Assistant VP, Product
Marketing, Nursing &
Health Professions
Stacey Rosenberg
Associate Dean Nursing
HEaRT Team
8. HEaRT Team
8
Lynn Ward
Associate Dean
Health Professions
Beth VanOrsdale
Associate Dean
Health Professions
Kristi Dalby
Clinical Faculty Nursing
Elizabeth Christman
Clinical Faculty Nursing
Hello and welcome to our presentation on the HEaRT learning model. I am dr. Stacey Rosenberg, Associate Dean of Nursing and am co-chair of this initiative.
Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) is a private, nonprofit, accredited institution with more than 3,000 on campus students and over 135,000 online students, making it one of the fastest growing universities in the nation.
By reinventing higher education to fit the needs of today's students and workforce, SNHU ensures that students are keeping pace with new technologies and professional requirements.
SNHU provides unparalleled support and service to help students achieve their dreams and transform their lives and the lives of those around them.
According to National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) (2017), approximately 40% of all undergraduate college students do not have the opportunity to engage with companies through internships. This can especially be true of online students in both graduate and undergraduate programs. Additionally, according to Jobvite (2017), 89% of recruiters believed competition amongst candidates is increasing. Job candidates are two times more likely to get a ‘good’ job promptly post-graduation if they have had a relevant job or participated in an internship (Busteed & Auter, 2017).
The Higher Education and Real-world Training (HEaRT) model was developed by SNHU’s nursing and health professions unit and SNHU Careers to address the accessibility of experiential learning for our online students. SNHU Careers utilizes their relationships with employer organizations to partner with industry leaders that present real-world problems for participants to address within the HEaRT challenges. Some of the industry leaders partnered with HEaRT include Spaulding Rehabilitation Center, Watermark Industries, The Edmond J. Safra Visiting Nurse Faculty Program at the Parkinson’s Foundation, Quintessential Health, and Hospital Sisters Health System.
Students who have completed these experiential learning challenges not only earn digital badges to validate their work, but they also build the critical knowledge and skills they need to succeed in the workforce. What really sets HEaRT apart, though, is the way it transcends barriers of traditional education. Breaking this barrier is especially evident for Global Education Movement (GEM) students. GEM is comprised of refugees from Kenya, Rwanda, Malawi, Lebanon and South Africa —populations that face incredible economic and geographic barriers. But with HEaRT, they are breaking through.
Since its inception in 2018, HEaRT has connected with numerous regional and national employer partners with over 662 students around the world. HEaRT has helped 404 GEM students open the door to low-cost pathways to earn their bachelor’s degree. These students have pitched executive summaries to healthcare leadership and collaborated with peers halfway around the world.
98% of the surveyed GEM learners who have completed HEaRT report that the experience has positively impacted their careers in terms of career initiation (first internship), virtual work experience, applying learned skills, improvements to resume, and new opportunities. 44% of GEM participants are now employed or are participating in other internships to help them gain additional workforce skills.
HEaRT has a completion rate of close to 50%, a significant percentage considering HEaRT is optional, free to learners, non-credit bearing, and they are often taking HEaRT in addition to their regular coursework. Learners rate the experience as an 8.3/10 and over 89% of participants would recommend the learning model to a classmate. The top skills GEM learners report learning included problem-solving (54%), virtual work skills (54%), time and task management (53%), communication (51%), and use of technology, such as Google tools, to complete work (47%). When asked how they feel the challenge prepared them for developing solutions for industry-related problems, the average rating is 8.4/10 indicating learners feel strongly that the challenge provided the opportunity to develop important 21st century skills necessary to be successful in the workplace.
In the last three years, HEaRT has proven its ability to provide SNHU Global Campus (GC) and Global Education Movement (GEM) learners with the opportunity to obtain skills, such as networking and critical thinking in a non-traditional asynchronous manner. Students work in teams within the D2L discussion board; the model also uses intelligent agents to sent automatic prompts to students and to notify faculty mentors when all of the required deliverables are submitted and ready to grade.
The faculty mentors are used to support HEaRT learners throughout the challenge. Mentors provide guidance, formative feedback, and evaluation of the challenge deliverables. Grading is minimal. Therefore, HEaRT is able to run with a mentor to learner ratio of 1:100 which allows a scalable learning opportunity that is simultaneously cost-effective for the university and supportive for the participants. While still allowing mentors to fully support participants, HEaRT allows learners allows learners to experience an invaluable opportunity with no financial commitment.
During the pandemic, HEaRT was adapted to meet the challenges associated with learners’ inability to find in-person clinical placement in healthcare settings. An additional 145 learners were able to utilize an adapted version of HEaRT to meet their experiential learning needs and degree program requirements while graduating on time.
Let me introduce you to the HEaRT team:
Please feel to contact us with questions
Thank you for allowing me to share our model with you!