I’m an actual Capella student compensated for posting about my experience at Capella.
Hello all! I am back with another MSN update as I continue on my FlexPath journey at Capella University!
I am currently in my third course and working on my fifth assessment, which is to create a 12–20 slide PowerPoint presentation for teaching a legal or ethical issue pertinent to nurse educators. I really like how FlexPath’s assessments are more practical applications of what I’m learning – not tests!
Here is a look at my course competency map which helps me understand how I am making progress and how I have been evaluated on certain competencies so far.
How I’m able to live. And learn.
I’ve received a bunch of questions about how I’m fitting this into my life and wanted to go over that a little bit more. Basically, I break up each assessment into manageable chunks and schedule myself to do one per day and give myself the weekends off. The FlexPath format lets me set my own deadlines, so I can manage my school work in the way that it works for me.
Here is how I approach each assessment:
- Review
First, I read the entire assessment thoroughly. I look at everything that’s expected of me. I’ve found that I need to read it a few times because these assessments are quite comprehensive, but they want you to be concise so every single word counts. - Prep
You can’t just jump in and write… there is some prep-work you have to do before writing that first sentence to ensure you’re addressing all of the criteria. You must read your required and suggested resources, all of the context, the scoring guide, and points to consider. - Make an Outline
I look at each scoring guide criteria and base my outline off of that. In FlexPath, there are no grades, but each assessment is evaluated on a 4-point scale and I try to get the highest one. - Collect Resources
I also make the effort to find my resources before I write. When I sit down to write and spend the majority of my time finding a source, it frustrates me mentally because I’m not making progress I can measure on paper. Maybe it’s just me, but I want to see the progress in front of me… so if I sat down to complete an assessment and two hours later I have three sentences because I spent practically the entire time looking for reputable sources, I’m disappointed in myself. Also, my first class taught me how to really find and analyze sources to ensure they’re reputable and reliable, which has saved me a ton of time. - Start writing
I then schedule myself to do 1-2 parts of my outline per day until complete, then I re-read and make final corrections. - Submit my assessment!
After submitting, I get detailed faculty feedback on my assessment and then have up to three attempts to resubmit my assessment to improve my evaluation.
Maximizing my time
Like nursing, it’s a lot easier for me to get smaller things done as I weave it into my other tasks rather than trying to sit down and get hours of uninterrupted time. Plus, uninterrupted time is not realistic with a kid, job, and family. I’m trying to progress through this program in one year so I need to find a sustainable routine that I can continue to do for that duration. Therefore, an hour per day is really working for me right now and that is doable with the FlexPath format.
This mentality reminds me of documenting my assessments at work. Rarely do I get 30-45 uninterrupted minutes to comprehensively document on all of my patients, so I weave it into my existing obligations. Not only do I get more done, I find that it’s a better quality because I’m giving myself frequent mental breaks.
Thanks for checking in – see you next month!
Learn more about Capella’s FlexPath learning format and nursing degrees.
Thanks for the post! I would love to see you do a post sometime that explains how to quickly choose the sources for your writing. Writing is my biggest weakness, and this is what is holding me back from getting a higher degree. If I can learn a few tricks, tips that would really boost my confidence!
Choosing sources can honestly be the longest part of the process. I learned during my MSN that the research aspect, if done correctly, takes some time. You have to do a literature review, then form your opinion/point and use sources to back it up. I used to form my opinion, then try to find sources to back it up. I frequently learned that my opinion or thought was not correct/just an assumption and would waste so much time looking for articles to support my assumptions. My first few MSN classes really helped me to learn this process and figure out what are good sources and not. Things to consider are: if it’s published in a peer-reviewed journal, if the author is credible (like actually searching them and seeing if they work in academia, or for a company who sponsors the studies!), the size of the study, the year, knowing the type of study and how it ranks (so a case study or observational study is low on the totem pole, but something like a double blind study is much higher and more reliable), etc. Don’t let the writing get you down! Capella had MULTIPLE writing resources that were free. I utilized them quite a bit in the beginning, but not much towards the end because matured in my writing and researching. Their librarians are very helpful, and you can submit your paper to a service for them to proof read, give you assistance on grammar/syntax/spelling, and to make sure you’re address points sufficiently, etc. It was really helpful. I don’t know how other online school stack up with those kinds of online assistance programs for writing, but I was really impressed with their resources.