Starting another course! I must be mad or is this all part of life long learning?

The year is well and truly entrenched now and first assignments will be due very soon. I have started my graduate certificate in Tertiary Education – you might ask why? The answer is simple, I want to be the best at what I do, therefore I feel I need to extend myself and make sure I utilise all possible avenues to be a great lecturer. Teaching formally is very different from teaching in the clinical area, which is what I am use to. However I must say that it is very disappointing to know that we teach the ideal and the reality is that in the clinical area/setting they are not practicing the ideal. Why is this?
I suspect this is largely due to being overworked and under staffed.

Some questions to ponder on! Does this mean there really is a theory practice gap?? No nurses and midwives always remember to be professional when they are working to the limit? Are they tempted to cut corners because they are so busy? How do they decide which corner to cut? Are they supported by management to maintain standards under these conditions? Is the paper work completed? Do they fill out forms when they feel under pressure, when they don’t have enough staff? Or do health professionals become blasé when they are always asked to work in these conditions? What answers do you have? One thing I have learned over the years is that unless the i’s are dotted nothing gets done. In other words, if all nurses and midwives were to fill out an aims form or incident form each time they felt unsafe or there was not enough staff to cover the work to the required standard something would soon be done. Why is it we don’t?

Now back to my course, it is all on line. This is good for me, as I have a couple of units I coordinate that are all on line, so I too can experience what it feels like to be student & how important it is to have the relevant information online. This is an interesting way of learning, interacting with the computer, meeting fellow students through blackboard profiling and emailing your tutor. I do find that I have enormous amounts of reading to do. One thing for sure is that you have to be committed to your study, enjoy the course you are doing and have clear study plans and deadlines for your assessments, otherwise you are doomed to fail. We are now in a technological age where communication is so different from when I went to school; in fact the way we all communicate now is so different. The geographical boundaries are reduced, I am currently studying with people all over Australia and I have students as far as New Guinea that is really amazing – what is next?

Enjoy your life long learning!