Since starting the research module on my course, I have gained an understanding of the need to be critical of the evidence itself! And also how complicated the process of creating bias-free valid evidence is, and how many opportunities for bias there are in each study.
I have gained lots of skills around the methods for gathering and analysing data. I feel that I already had a fairly questioning thought process as default, but now I am able to articulate more clearly why something is biassed or can only be trusted so far.
I never thought I would have a blog or enjoy blogging as much as I do, so I am really grateful that I was forced to start as a result of my course. Although it is nice to see other people reading the blog it is mainly an ‘online study notes’ tool that I use; it enables me to quickly search for topics, search for module content by date, and reminds me to cover all aspects of a topic, such as the need to create a blog entry for each OT model. It is proving to be a real motivating factor (organising my thoughts, finding an otter picture that represents the topic, seeing a pretty blog page at the end) and helps make what I have typed more memorable- as well easier to link ideas together. This is probably helped by needing to categorise and tag the blogs each time; by grouping ideas from different modules or timescales together it make it easier to see how they might all connect. I suppose I probably have more technical social media knowledge now as a result, although I don’t think I was terrible to begin.
Already both when reading articles and overall in life I find myself dialoguing with myself in my head about the possible devil’s advocate outcomes of an article or a situation. I guess this could be the start of reflection-in-action!
Lifelong Learning with OT 