This page is designed to provide our expectations of your work for various course components as well as to give you helpful tips that will make the course more fun.
Reminder: Course faculty can be accessed via email at
anytime that you have questions or difficulty with the course materials by
clicking on Communication then Email.
| Introductory Note
Welcome to the course. You are about to embark on a unique learning experience and one that we think you will find both educational and enjoyable. The first requirement that you have to meet is to "HAVE FUN." Of course, there are graded assignments; you will receive a grade commensurate with the time and effort that you put into completing the course requirements. Everyone starts off with a "passing grade" - you control your final grade. Now that we have gotten "the grade" out of the way it is important for you to know that in an online course, you present your identify to your classmates in somewhat different ways than you do in a traditional face-to-face classroom. Over the next several weeks, you will get to know each other and the course faculty. Since you may have not physically met one another and come from different experiences and backgrounds, you may think that this will be difficult to do. In past versions of this course, we have found that friendships and networks are forged from class experiences that extend far beyond the course content. Lastly, a comment so important that you will hear it repeated several times: YOU are responsible for communicating your needs, requests, and concerns to the faculty. Online courses do not allow us to interpret and respond to "body language" as we would in face to face classes. We are dependent on you to help us to understand your needs. Your communications with us will make your learning experience more satisfying and less frustrating. |
| Communication guidelines At the graduate level the expectation is that you will seek feedback and consultation as necessary to help you progress through the course. The course faculty are available at designated "electronic office hours" and by appointment to assist you with class. Keep in mind that assistance includes informal discussions of what you are learning. The faculty needs to hear from you regularly as you are learning and it is especially important if you are struggling with a particular concept, idea or tool. The following guidelines should help with the communication:
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| Course
Readings Readings are selected to provide you with beginning material to think about the concepts in the course. Using the readings you are expected to participate in the discussion boards to clarify your understanding of the information provided and begin to synthesize that information into your own framework for what healthcare informatics is about. Keep in mind there are not "right" answers but there are common frameworks for understanding and using the concepts and their relationships. Discussion and writing about these concepts and their relationships help the faculty and your peers to help you earn those common frameworks. Integrating what you have learned to this point will begin with your abilities to effectively communicate via the discussion boards and your written assignments. So the required readings give you briefly the basic material to start your thinking and learning. The Bibliography is provided to expand the information available to you on the topical area. It is not required reading. This resource, along with the web sites, address key topics, issues and concerns in the area of study. This list can be used to help you select a topic for more in-depth study. Many of you are interested in particular areas of informatics and these readings can get you started on a line of study in that area of interest. |
| Netiquette Every successful human contact is dependent on the assumption that each of us are valuable and have something to contribute to the interaction. The way we honor that personal value is through manners and respectful ways of interacting with one another. The Internet has provided us with a medium that overwhelmingly extends our abilities to relate to one another. We can now exchange ideas, thoughts, emotions, etc with one another across the globe. It is important to remember to be respectful in those exchanges and to remember that behind that text or graphic is a real person. There are a number of good sites that outline the guidelines for interaction in this new medium. If you are new to the "net" it might be useful for you to check them out. Click on External Links > Netiquette. |
| Participating on Discussion Boards
The course Discussion Boards are the "classroom" for this course. One of the strengths of distance learning is that everyone becomes a partner in both the teaching and the learning. The course faculty exchange the role of "lecturer" for that of "facilitator" and work to pull together all of the new learnings, knowledge and experience of the participants into the framework of the course objectives. One of the critical expectations in a post to the discussion forums is that it is thoughtfully done and that you substantiate the response with your readings/experience. We are building knowledge based on a critical analysis of what we read and experience in relation to health care informatics. There is a lot of opinion out there. Opinion is useful but should be compared to current knowledge and "put to the test" so to speak to see if it measures up to current mental models. It is this critical analysis that allows us the opportunity to see if current knowledge needs to be changed as well. You will learn and refine your skills in analyzing the utility of a web page and its information to nursing practice. By thoughtful posting to the boards you will also gain experience in writing. The Pre-Course Computer Skills Module is always available for you to use as a refresher if you have problems with remembering how to participate on the boards. Remember that it can be accessed using your personal ID and password that you received at the beginning of the course. Additionally faculty are always an email away. Lest we are too serious, the Student Center is for the "chewing the fat". In this board pretty much anything goes for discussion and consideration. This area is the student lounge of cyberspace so consider it your arena for discussion. |
| Pre-Course
Skills Module The Pre-Course Skills Module is designed to help you gain skill in some of the basic tasks you will need to use in the course. Naming files, sending emails, subscribing to listservs are a few of the skill sets available in the module. For novice and expert alike if you don't use the skill regularly you may forget some of the steps in accomplishing it. That is why the module is not only a great resource to help you learn the skill but keep in mind that it is a ready resource to review a particular skill that you may not have done in several weeks. You may want to book mark the site so that it is easy to return to it. Keep your personal ID and password handy to access the modules anytime during the course. |
| Sending
email It is important that you test early how you can send attachments. If the applications are compatible then it may be as simple as just sending an email with an attachment. To do this simply select the attachment icon in your email application, find the file you want to attach and click on it and usually that is enough to attach the file/document you want to send. If you have questions contact the course faculty. |
| Server
hints Working on a computer and being connected via the telephone lines and a modem brings its own set of issues when one is trying to communicate. The issues of connecting with another person or group are just as frustrating in cyberspace as they can be in face to face situations. One of your most frustrating moments will be when the technology goes awry and you are beginning (perhaps at the last moment) to work on a project or communicate with someone else in the middle of a project. Servers do weird things and, although that is not an excuse to say you couldn't finish a project, sometimes the best thing to do is sign off for a while and come back to it a little later (sometimes it only takes 10-15 minutes). That is one of the reasons for carefully creating a class project timeline that gives you plenty of time to deal with these issues. Another useful strategy is to stop what you are doing, shut down your computer/or reboot, and start all over with a fresh computer. If you continue to have difficulties connecting or staying connected, contact a faculty member. |
| Software
hints One of the big challenges in beginning to work with computers is the vast array of software available and variety that different people use. It becomes especially important when you are working in your group and different people have different email programs and different word processing programs. Sending work between computers with different operating systems and different applications can be a challenge and ongoing issue. A good example is sending email attachments as we discussed earlier. Another problem occurs when you are working in one version of an application and then take it with you to another computer that has a different version of the same software or a totally different software. Again check this out early in the course. Decide where you are going to be doing your work. Is it all on one computer? If so there is usually no problem. Are you going to be doing some at home and some at school or even at work? If that is the case check out what software each machine is running. If the versions are the same that is probably okay. If the software is the same but the versions are different, you will need to remember to save your work so that it can be read by the oldest version. For example, if I have WORD 97 at home and decide to work on my stuff at work, they have WORD 6. I will need to save my work at home so that it can be opened by WORD 6 at work. The best way to do that is to select SAVE AS; go down to the SAVE AS TYPE box and scroll down to Rich Text Format selection and click on that (I can also select WORD 6 but RTF generally works better.) Now my document can usually be read in most MS versions of software. You can also use this strategy to save a file to be read in a different software application. The ones that MSWORD supports are in the drop down list that where you selected Rich Text Format (.rtf extension). Lastly, the course requires that you download and install several software applications that you will use in the course. If you are not using your own computer for your class work, you will need to be sure that it is okay to download and install these applications. They are listed in External Links > Course Tools page and have hyperlinks to the download sites. It is important to remember that after you download these applications, you need to install them and that is separate from downloading them. if you have questions, consult with the course faculty. |
| Starting assignments Doing an online course requires that you set the pace and schedule for yourself since you don't have regular formal class times to structure your time around. We suggest that you establish a regular time to meet with yourself and computer for class and that you start on your assignments early. A suggested class project timeline is ~6-8 weeks before an assignment is due . |
| Submitting assignments Assignments are due on the day indicated on the Class Schedule unless other arrangements are made with the course faculty. To submit your assignment, save your file with the initial of your first, middle and last name and the assignment name, i.e. as Donna Bailey I would label mine as dwbfinal and since I use WORD97 it would automatically add the .doc extension. This file naming convention is necessary so that the faculty can be sure that they have received your assignment and archived it correctly. Assignments not labeled in this way will be returned to the student to be correctly submitted. |
| Subscribing to a listserv Listservs are simply group emails. The key thing to remember about listservs is that you subscribe (and do other administrative tasks) by sending a message to one address and post messages/communicate with other subscribers to another address. They are separate email addresses. The next important thing to remember is that when you reply to a message it goes to everyone who is subscribed to the list. This means that it is public and can not only be read by others but also may be excerpted and show up somewhere else without your knowledge or permission. A guideline to use when getting ready to send your message or reply is "would I say this to a group in person?" if the answer is no...rewrite your response or refrain from responding until you can compose a response that you could offer to a group. Instructions to subscribe are available for the list you are interested in and usually consist of a message to the listserv software address that has no subject in the subject field and the message "subscribe N117Listserv Donna Bailey". You generally get instructions that tell you about the list and other useful list options after you subscribe. It is a good idea to print these instructions so that when you need/want to do something else with the list, like unsubscribe or digest, you will have them. |
05/9/2001 SPE