Brief Course Orientation

Welcome to Caring Science, Mindful Practice. Our team looks forward to working with you over the next 4 weeks. Here are some suggestions that will help you successfully participate in this course:

Explore all of the icons in the Table of Contents at the left of the screen because they have important information that will clarify what you need to do to be successful throughout the duration of the course. Here is a rundown of what each icon offers:

  • Home  is the front page "welcome" for the course.
  • Announcements  takes you to important, ongoing information.Please check the announcements every day for tips and feedback that will help you be successful in the course.
  • Modules takes you to  organizer buttons. Clicking on one of the organizer buttons will take you to information and helpful links for required units of study in each week in the course. Within each unit of study, there will be easy links corresponding to required discussion and journal posting areas. You will also find a course calendar, a summary of assignment expectations, and other helpful links and information.
  • Discussions takes you to a list of the required discussion board areas.
  • People takes you to profiles of  teachers and participants.
  • Syllabus  takes you to general information about the course.
  • Quizzes takes you to course evaluations. Please be sure to take the opportunity to offer feedback by completing these two quizzes when indicated.

Print out the course calendar (found under Modules) and fill in the dates that correspond to the weeks listed on the calendar. The date you should fill in for Week 1 corresponds to the week in which the class begins, and so on.

Print out Instructor information so that you have a hard copy. This way, if the online course page goes down and you have temporarily lost the ability to contact the teacher via the course, you will still have the information you need to contact the teacher in a different way if necessary.

Familiarize yourself with the Modules, Assignments, and Discussions the first day the course opens so that you are able to keep up from the very beginning. Many studies related to online learning have shown that procrastination is one of the most common reasons why students fail online courses.

The most successful online students complete a small amount of work on the course each day at a specified time--for instance during lunch breaks.
Do not hesitate to ask for help via e-mail or online postings. We want you to be successful and we are here to help you.