Module 6 Final Posting

This was the first time I had an entire semester of strictly online courses and one of the things I thought was great about it was the fact that you could be anywhere in the world and still have access to the content and work of the course. Also, I really liked how you could schedule things around vacation times. I also really appreciated how quickly you receive feedback from professors and T.A's in general in asynchronous online courses. I also really liked the fact that you could work on assignments anytime of the day or night, so it really worked well into a busy schedule.

The main downside was not being able to meet any of my classmates face to face. I really enjoy "in person" interaction with others. Although, the discussion board and blog features of this course at least helped us all to be able to share our opinions. One other thing that was kind of hard was that sometimes it's helpful for me to receive feedback in person if there's a concept I'm not quite understanding, and this can't be done in an online course. The only other thing I can think of is that you have to be a very disciplined student in online courses and not procrastinate getting your work turned in, which is something I still need to improve on.

I really knew hardly anything about informatics and information technology until this course and although I still only have a very basic knowledge of things, it has helped me realize the importance of understanding how to use technology in healthcare. One of the most important things I learned about was learning more about different clinical decision support systems so that I can utilize them to help improve my care of patients as an APRN. This class also taught me to not be so afraid of technology. Although I still have a long way to go as far as getting comfortable with using certain types of data software in helping advance my skills as an APRN (i.e., electronic health records for example).

Will we utilize some of the data software programs we learned about in this class in our practicums in order to further develop our technical skills in providing better care for our patients? I also wanted to say thanks to Sue and Kathy for all of their help throughout the semester. I especially learned a lot more about Endnote that I plan to utilize in future writing.