Course Intro

hello everyone and welcome to professional issues in nursing for the baccalaureate prepared nurse my name is Dr April Bice and I'll be the lead instructor for this section of your course this semester. that is a picture of myself and my family here that you see on the screen. This is my daughter Kayla and my husband Branddon and myself here in the middle and our two baby boys identical twins who are due this September. we have Preston on this side and Elijah over here. just to give you a little bit of background on myself- I graduated from the University of Central Florida in 2004 with my BSN and then graduated with my MSN from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in 2011 and recently with my PhD from the University of tennessee-knoxville as well in 2015. my background is primarily Pediatrics- I have been staff nurse in pediatrics focused in ICU, urgent care, ER, PIC,U acute pediatrics, hematology oncology, PACU, surgery, you name it I've done a little bit of everything with regard to children. but right now my main focus is primary care pediatrics. I am also a certified pediatric nurse practitioner which I became in 2012 and I am taking a pause from practice right now to focus on teaching and academics. Lets get you started here with your course. so when you log into the nursing 316 course on Blackboard your default page will be this start here page- that's what you'll see when you log in to the course. now this toolbar here you want to pay close attention to. you will be spending time in this area getting into the tabs, into the links that will take you to all of the various assignments, course materials and areas that you will need to review and look at throughout the semester. now when you login for the first time please do read this area -the start here- it is helpful in letting you know what each one of these tabs to the left is responsible for. if you come down just a little bit there will be some information about myself, a little bit about how to contact me, questions and also scheduling appointments via WebEx or via phone. you may always email me with anything that you need but I ask that the first place you ask questions should be the course Q&A discussion forum in the discussion board because this is a discussion forum that every student will be reading and many students will have the same questions as you. so if you ask within that point I will get back to you there. if it is a more personal question or personal regarding your own assignment you can email me and I do check my email daily. responses to discussion board and email should take place within 24 hours. if it is on a Friday or Saturday it may take just a little bit longer due to the weekend delay but I'm usually very quick about responding to emails and discussion board. my phone number is also listed here should you need to contact me for urgent matters. if there's an urgent issue between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. that you need my attention to right away please don't hesitate to give me a call or simply text me. just make sure that you put your name & the course number in the text message and I will respond to you as soon as I can. coming down just a little bit further you'll see some information on your teaching assistant. we will have a teaching Co-instructor in this course which will be very helpful to you and very helpful to me so you will see both the teaching instructor assistant as well as myself sending emails, answering discussion board, as well as responding to emails. your course text is advancing your career concepts of professional nursing the sixth edition. this is something you can get through either through the university bookstore or you can simply order it right on Amazon or other text book websites. next if you go into the syllabus tab here to the left you'll find some general course description information, just some basic objectives and learning outcomes. next you'll find the course syllabus that has been recently updated by me to include everything that you will need for this semester. after that you'll find a video that represent each one of the assignments and submissions that you will be turning into me this semester. you will see videos that are made by Dr. April Matthias. Dr. Matthias is the course coordinator for this class. she is not your lead instructor for this class, however she is the liaison for faculty who teach the course and she has graciously created videos for each one of your assignments that will help you understand what is required, expected, and what you want to do for each one of the assignments that is submitted this semester. so you want to make sure that you review each one of these videos and the corresponding documents that go with these videos for the assignment very early on in the semester because as you are well aware this is a short semester and you have assignments due very frequently throughout the week. so reading these descriptions of the assignment as well as watching these videos early on will be best for you. next if you go into the Schedule tab this basically just gives a short outline of what we'll be doing throughout the course in calendar format and let you know week by week what will be expected. the next tab is the learning modules tab. you will be spending the bulk of your time in this tab because within the learning modules tabs you'll find each one of your weekly modules- one through eight. week one starts today May 2nd and that will go until the end of the semester. In each one of these modules you'll find what your expectations are for the week so this will give you an overview- objectives of the module, what you will be learning, and next you have a to do list. The to-do list is made up of your reading assignments, your classroom activities, and then finally submitted assignments- what you'll be turning in that week. under the submitted assignments you will always find what you will be turning in. if you do not see it listed underneath this submitted assignments then you will not be turning it in for an actual grade. the only time that this is different is under classroom activities in module 2 you do have a nursing philosophy that is due in week 2- module 2. it is not for a grade but it is something you will have to submit. all the way down you'll come to the discussion board. this week we ask that you just introduce yourself to your classmates. you want to title your thread with your name. be sure to include answers to the following questions and here are the following questions that you should answer. we ask that you put your primary post up by Wednesday at 11:30 pm. please do not feel inclined to respond to every single student the class. we know that you are very happy to meet everyone but it is not required for you to respond to every student. we simply ask that you interact with two classmates this week and respond to 2 people by Friday at 11:30 p.m. next is the your discussion board so within the discussion board forum you will find a weekly discussion. at the very top you'll see the course Q&A discussion forum that I just previously mentioned. this is where you're gonna answer or receive answers to all the questions you have about the course. remember this is the first place you want to go when asking questions because everybody will be able to answer you should you have a question. another student may know as well as myself and also the teaching assistant. week 1 this is where you will be posting your introductions to each other and you will always within these discussion forum see what the directions are for that week to discussion to all the way through eight. the only different discussion forum you will find within this page here is that there is a contemporary nursing issue project topic and partner forum. your largest paper for the largest percentage of your grade in this paper-the contemporary nursing issue project and here is where you will ask questions about this as well as where you will post your topic for your issue paper. we will talk a little bit more about this next week. if you need to email somebody in the course there is a tab here that directs email. this next icon here is called student safe assign check. your assignments will be checked through a plagiarism detector called safe assign and in this safe assign check you can as many times as you want submit a paper to see what your plagiarism, paraphrasing, & basically citation or reference percentages. because we go by basic percentage of 30%- no higher than 30 percent matching is what we would like to see. there are certain stipulations in certain guidelines where sometimes the percentages are outside that 30% but you can always check your assignments before submitting the final assignment through the safe assign check. here announcements I post usually will come via email to you and also on this announcement page on the homepage. be sure to log into this course often for announcements because I do send emails frequently. I do post announcements frequently. sometimes there are changes that need to be made that are unexpected so you want to be sure that you check all of you announcements and your email account through UNCW very frequently as you will be responsible for any changes that are made via email or the announcements. if you need any technical support please make sure you click on the technical support tan. You can contact TAC or you can contact the Office of e-learning for information or questions regarding technical problems on blackboard. next is your Randall library icon. this is where you will be spending a lot of your time when you're searching for literature- either for your discussion board assignments, for your submission of assignments, and definitely when you're doing a literature review for your contemporary nursing issue paper. if you choose to be in a group or a partner for your issue issue paper it is allowed that you be a part of a group for your nursing issue paper no more than two people together. you will have your own group set up in this user & groups icon right here. once you've decided that you want to be with a partner or you seek out a partner I will create groups of two or more in this user & groups tab that you can respond to one another, send files to one another, and so that I can see that you are equally participating in the paper. I think that is all I have for the course introduction. should you have any questions here in the beginning please feel free to email me or post questions in the course Q&A. I look forward to working with each of you this semester and I wish you all of the best success