Hi everyone – greetings from Ontario!
My name is Kathy and I live in Newmarket (just north of Toronto) with my husband and 13 year old daughter.
It is thrilling for me to share that this is my final course in pursuit of my MEd with a specialization in the Workplace & Adult Learning (WAL) program. I have always been drawn to the art of teaching and learning within online environments so am naturally very excited to be a part of this course!
Professionally, I am a registered nurse and currently work in Organizational Development (OD) for a Community Health Care organization funded by the Ministry of Health. I have worked in my organization for sixteen years in a variety of roles however the past seven in Organizational Development and Quality. In my role of OD, my responsibilities include designing and delivering workshops, providing in-house consultations of learning strategies and more recently the online learning portfolio has been assigned to me including role of LMS administrator, implementing and moderating webinars and administering/creating eLearning.
This course is of great interest as I seek to understand more deeply how to create and stimulate engaging online learning experiences that promote collaboration and community. Healthcare is constantly undergoing change in response to global trends and shifts; accordingly my belief is that workplaces need to more deeply leverage technology in a way that creates knowledge building/sharing and sets up learners for success.
My gravatar is from a trip this past August to Prince Edward Island…an amazing place to take part in many of my family’s favourite activities such as biking, hiking and simply enjoying lots of great food!
Cheers!
Kathy
Kathy's Online Learning Blog 
Hi Kathy,
Great to find another fellow R.N.! I find the description of your role at work very stimulating and fun! I agree that social media has so much potential for promoting collaboration and community engagement in the health care field. Not to date myself, but back in the day when I worked in public health, I found my workplace very slow and hesitant in adopting technology for such purposes. I would love to examine the potentials and possibilities of using technology and social media effectively both for knowledge sharing and community building in health care fields. I hope you’re planning a well-deserved party for the completion of your M.Ed. Many congratulations!!!
Hi Lida, thanks for your comments! I think overall healthcare has been slow to embrace technology for learning and community building…however I am optimistic as I see progression! One of the biggest obstacles I see is related to fear of privacy breaches of patients and security issues; like you, I am looking forward to understanding more about tensions and opportunities in this regard. Kathy
The privacy stuff is very interesting, Kathy. Can you tell me a little bit more about who voices these concerns and where they might arise? I suppose some of it is obvious re: the challenges of maintaing secure e-records…
Hi Laura, great question and an area that I’m hoping to unpack more over the duration of this course. You are right, concerns about privacy breaches under the personal health act is always a concern however about three years I ran into another obstacle which still has not remedied itself. I was asked to strike a committee to investigate the possibility of designing online discussion forums that our decentralized staff could access; although there was much interest from front line staff, the executive team made a decision that it was ‘the wrong time’ with concerns of inappropriate use and lack of infrastructure. It was also a time when our staff had very little exposure to online learning and perhaps in hindsight the readiness wasn’t there…. I believe we are in a more appropriate place now and that staff are much more aware about privacy and ‘what they can and cannot say’ online…hence, my optimism that we will be able to soon revisit this type of learning! Something I keenly champion!
Hi Kathy! Nice to be in a class with you again!
Nance
Hi Nance, great to see you again too! Think there may be a few familiar names in our class which is wonderful! Kathy
Hi Kathy, looks like there a few people in our class that work in healthcare (I’m a radiation therapist). You’re right there is definitely concern about how embracing technology and becoming more online will impact privacy and confidentiality. It seems inevitable though – our clinic is about to go paperless and we already connect to patient data servers via a secure website. I’ll be interested to learn more from you regarding your involvement in webinars as they seem to have quickly become our primary form of continuing education in RT. Glad to hear you had a great trip to PEI! I was actually born in Summerside and grew up mostly around there and up west in Bloomfield. Cheers!
Hey Brian! Yes, it’s great being with so many folks from healthcare in this course, a first for me and I can’t wait to learn from others with similar backgrounds! And you bet,the move from paperless to digital can be interesting…not sure why, but I feel like we have more privacy breaches and concerns since move to electronic world. Perhaps one reason might be that everything is just more trackable, more accessible and quicker to locate information….aligning with the online world. As for PEI….some of the best lobster I’ve ever eaten! Cheers! Kathy