I am in week 4 of my first online MSN class at UTA. My concept paper was turned in 2 days ago. I am sweating bullets thinking that I may fail this class with a grade of 82. That's right, C is the new F when you enter the graduate program.
It is a lot of pressure and I hope that my posts throughout my journey will help others who come along after me.
My advice so far:
1. STUDY and READ everything for that first open book quiz. There are only a few questions and you will fret over each one.
2. Post your best to the discussion board. They really do read each one and will reduce your score if you are not quite grasping the class concepts.
3. Get ahead and stay ahead.
4. Do not get behind.
5. Read the rubric and be sure to include each element in your papers and presentations.
I will update as time goes by. Thanks and good luck to everyone else in the program now and in the future.
Textbooks, Reading Material, and Resources: ALWAYS NEWEST EDITION!!
Mc Ewen, M., & Wills, EM (2011). Theoretical basis for nursing (5th ed). Philadelphia: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins. ISBN-13: 978-1-60547-323-9; ISBN-10: 1-60547-323-5.
Walker, L. & Avant, K. (2011). Strategies for theory construction in nursing (4th ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall. ISBN: 0-13-119126-8.
NOTE: There is no guarantee that a newer edition will not be published before the start of the course.
I used the 3rd edition of the Walker book (Strategies...) and it was fine. Nursing theory is mostly old. For the other book, I had the correct 5th edition but would have felt perfectly fine using an older 4th edition.
Weekend before NURS 5301 (Research) begins and I am trying to get a jump on the first assignment. It is ironic that I would enjoy doing research full time, yet I absolutely dread this class. I foresee this class to be busy, difficult, and fully able to bring out my bipolar personality.
For everyone taking Nursing Research in your BSN program, my advice is to remember everything that you can. The graduate Research class should really be spread out over ten weeks. Unfortunately it is too much work crammed into too little amount of time. I doubt if I will post much. However, I will give updates when I can.
Research NURS 5301: Just turned in critical appraisal #1. Safe Assign said that I matched 78% with bits and pieces from 28 other papers. It makes me nauseous, however, there have probably been a thousand papers on the exact same critical appraisal done. I guess it is to be expected. Oh well, hopefully I can be a little more original in critical appraisal #2.
If anyone else is in this class, then please post what your safe-assign score was.
Takes a load off of my mind. Hopefully we get our grades back faster than we did in the theory class. Although I do realize that it takes a long time to grade all of those papers.
Yeah, the grading is tougher than for the BSN. It freaks me out that I need an 84 just to get a B. I'm still not really sure how this works. If I get a C in this class, does it still count as a pass or do I have to retake it? As long as my overall GPA is at least 3.0, is it good?
iLOVEbees
171 Posts
I used the 3rd edition of the Walker book (Strategies...) and it was fine. Nursing theory is mostly old. For the other book, I had the correct 5th edition but would have felt perfectly fine using an older 4th edition.
FYI so you can save a little money if you wish.