59 Learning Reflections

I learn best by watching and observing as well as being hand on. I retain the most information when I am able to read a short text or slides, talk through them, ask question and be shown things. Another way of learning that has also really worked for me in talking through concepts and active recall. My visual learning style helps me bring all aspects together, I can observe the interplay between components that shape the outcome. Physically doing tasks reinforces ideas and allows me to better think through concepts because I’ve physically done it. I can see the direct effects of my actions and I am actively engaged.

Active listening is taking time to fully hear, understand and comprehend what someone is telling you without interrupting, loosing focus and adding your own opinion. This is an active process to fully underhand and interpret what someone is telling you. To do this you must be mindful, focused and intentional. I do this by facing the speaker, giving eye contact, not interrupt, focus and keep opinions to yourself. I have found that this works well when you ask questions after. Reflect and retain, ask the speaker to clarify for you and recap what they have just told you.

I had never heard of visual thinking strategies before or engaged with it before class on Tuesday. Based on our class work with VTS I understand it as writing down things you see. The details, colors, facial expressions, things in the background, clothing, position and hand placement. You can take this and interpret it into what you may think is happening. I asked myself “What is happening” and “what do I see that makes me think that?’ It brought out a higher level of reasoning in myself and caused me to focus on details to be able to back that up.

I thought it was very interesting to hear my classmates’ opinions and assumptions. Honestly, I was taken aback by some of the assumptions made by my peers. I took this assignment more so as to write down what you can see. The facts. I wrote the color of clothes, what people were wearing, where they were, body position, focus..etc. For our in class activity, I wrote:

“She is wearing a blue dress with a red headband, right hand on her chest. There are 3 men in suits gathered around her as she kneels on the table. There are two women peering behind the curtain at the women on the table. There is a bowl of instruments next to the table….”

Other people said things like “this was in the 1900s”, “she is probably a slave..” It was very interesting to me to hear people writing down assumptions on what they thought was going to versus what was in the painting. I found some of it a little unsettling because we didn’t know these things for sure but I liked hearing new perspectives and reasoning. I enjoyed hearing my peers’ viewpoints and what they took away from the picture that I maybe wasn’t.

I really enjoyed how it made me stop and really think about what I was seeing. It makes me have a greater appreciation for the things around me. I picked up on so many more details and deeper meaning that I wouldn’t have before. I had to stop and ask myself what I was seeing. What was happening in the picture. By stopping and analyzing I could see a bigger picture and maybe even create a story or scenario. I have a newfound appreciation for the detail in the painting we viewed in class and for art in general. It’s the little details that make a picture say so much and tell a story. Its purpose is to make us slow down and really think about what it is we are looking at. We all did the same activity but each came to different conclusions, asking ourselves what we say to make us get there helps us all learn from one another.I learned by slowing down, I can learn the meaning and appreciate what paintings and artwork depict. I can ask myself questions to dive deeper.

Throughout this course we used AI in various different assignments for various purposes leading me to have a broader perspective and experiences with AI. Along the way I have found many pros and many cons allowing smarter and more tailored usage of AI. While I used AI in this course I also used it in my public health class for my papers. I effectively used it to create my in text citations for me to ensure plagiarism wasn’t occurring and I had the correct formatting. It was correct every time I used it, I always just double checked and highlighted it in my references and papers to show chatgtp did the citation for me. I have learned this is a reliable resource to cite things for papers to ensure I am doing it correctly and double checking my citations I do myself.

Within health humanities, most of the time I used it for grammatical purposes and to check my papers/reflections to see if it thought I talked about each item I was supposed to/ met criteria for assignments and in well enough depth. It would give me feedback on my flow, clarity, grammar, conciseness, and what I can improve along with what I did well. Overall, this is what I benefited from most and will continue to use AI for. It gives a second set of eyes to my work and gains a new perspective of what I may have missed or needs more clarity to ensure my reader knows what I am talking about. I struggle with assuming my reader knows everything, so this is very helpful for me to know what I can clarify or reword to make more sense.

Chatgtp was amazing at generating summaries of articles, however it missed more detail compared to those I wrote for myself. It was very broad and didn’t give numbers or specifics that helped deepen my summaries I wrote or give examples thats strengthen the summary. When I used chat gtp to summarize an article in the style of a Dr. Seuss poem in order to make it easy to understand and remember. It was funny, some of it was helpful but it also over complicated it and it removed a lot of details. I think this was a great idea and something similar could definitely be helpful such as making flashcards or a rhyme out of information I need to memorize/learn. I think a summary and a lower reading level would be more helpful than a Dr. Seuss poem. While I never used ChatGTP to proofread papers specifically for grammar, I did use grammarly and was and have been disappointed. It ends up being overkill, the site does way too much, it’s unnecessary. While it does have some good and helpful catches and suggestions, the majority are not needed- in fact many aren’t even correctly used.

I thought AI was very helpful in finding scholarly sources from which to write a literature review and to help explore scholarly articles. It took a lot of time off my hands because it was able to locate sources that were scholarly and specific to my research which would take so much longer and require much more energy on my own. We both would have found the same articles or very similar but chat gtp was much faster and ensured they were accurate scholarly sources. I loved exploring AI this semester and I feel I have increased my knowledge and found it easy to use and helpful. I will use AI to enhance my papers and ensure my work is correct. I have learn when to use and when not to use AI and which sources (grammerly, chat..etc). I have also learned to tell all ways to know if my information given is not beneficial or accurate. I think AI is a great resource when used correctly, most of the time it is accurate and helpful if you give it the information it needs to help you. It can be harmful if using it for summaries or giving it not enough information forit to understand what you need or what it is doing. Overall I think it’s a great tool to check ifyou have fulfilled assignments, to cite things and to help find quality and good sources.

I have an increased awareness of my usage of social media and stopping to think about what I’m consuming. Additionally, asking myself what my media is saying and how it makes me feel and makes me view the world around me. Using media analysis, I learned that a huge reason for stigma around people’s health, experiences, illness, healthcare and spirits, is from the way these things are depicted in the media. We rely on social media so heavily, everything is online and right infront of our face and we fall into the trap of just believing what we see and what is right in front of us. We dont care to fact check, dig deeper, we often just consume what we are given and what is there and believe it. Oftentimes health issues are so generalized and a huge reason we have assumptions and biases around health issues and experiances. The movie I watched reinforced that for me, I had seen it once before but taking the time in this class to rewatch it and analyze it and its messages, I was honestly sad to see how the media portrays disability and quality of life. SO many people have health disparities or disabilities and have a fulfilling joyous life unlike what was depicted in the movie. I was able to open my eyes by reading other people’s health disparities narratives to see just how diverse people experiences even within healthcare and how my future profession as a nurse, I can be more empathetic and understanding.

I really enjoyed the pressbook aspect of this class and the reflections upon my learning. It allowed me to learn more about myself as a student and also push and challenge myself. I had to slow down and ask myself what I really did learn and sometimes that meant going back and doing a more in depth dive of an assignment, reading or analysis. I was able to take more away from assignments and learn from not only myself but my classmates. I learned my strengths and weaknesses and also how to be a better student. I think reflection allows for growth, understanding what you took away and maybe comparing that to what you hoped you would or wished you could have. I think it is very telling on overall conceptualization and effort. It pushes us to assess and challenge and question ourselves.