#SW2018 Visualizing Data: Infographic Assignments across the Social Work Curriculum
Right to Left: Laurel, Nathalie & Melanie
This year at the 4th Annual Social Work Distance Education conference, Nathalie Jones of Tarleton State University, Melanie Sage of the University at Buffalo and I presented on the use of infographics in the social work curriculum. This blog post does a few things: 1) it offers an example of infographics as a tool for improving digital literacy; 2) it offers a sample of what a hands-on conference workshop proposal looks like, and; 3) it helps us share our research.
The three of us (Laurel, Nathalie, Melanie) have been working together on polishing our infographic assignments for a few years. In a previous blog post, we offer assignment details and even rubrics you can use to build your assignments if you are a social work educator. We share these in the spirit of service to our profession and to support your work.
We’ve been using infographics as an assignment in our classrooms for several years and have even collected some data across our universities to ask students about the pros and cons. Guess what? The students overwhelmingly love infographic assignments. They appreciate working their creative muscles, like the opportunity to learn a new and transferable skill, and say they’ll use infographics again. Also, the technology can be a little bit frustrating, and some students are uncomfortable with the lack of structure. (We argue that it’s good for students to sometimes get uncomfortable with lack of structure- this experience of managing some ambiguity is an important practice skill, as we know well!)
Here are the slides from the presentation:
You can also access the handout we shared during the conference sessions: SWDE2018 Visualizing Data: Infographic Assignments across the Social Work Curriculum #VisualSW.
Finally, here is the session proposal we submitted to the conference:
Abstract: The use of infographics for classroom assignments is becoming commonplace in higher education, although less is known about its use in social work education. This workshop will review how three social work educators collaborated to develop, implement and evaluate an infographic assignment for courses across the social work curriculum. By the end of the session, participants will be able to recognize how infographic tools can be incorporated into assignments for social work courses, and understand how the use of social media as a teaching tool in undergraduate courses can be used to develop and assess social work competencies.
Proposal Text:
According to the theory of experiential learning (Kolb, 1984), ideal learning happens in contexts that offer concrete experiences and active experimentation alongside abstract and reflective learning. Bloom’s Taxonomy (1994) suggests that higher-order thinking skills include creating, designing, and producing information, whereas classroom assignments often reinforce lower-level thinking such as interpreting, explaining, and comparing. Higher-order learning assignments would include situations in which students can experiment with product generation for real-world situations, reflect on the relationship between theory and practice, and receive specific feedback about their efforts. Social work educators can create these situations by incorporating social and digital media into their classroom. Technologies such as Twitter, blogging, and podcasting make it possible for student to develop academic assignments that will be consumed by a public audience. The prospect of public consumption forces students to consider their audience, the skills they need, and the impact of their work outside of the professor and classroom. Inviting the outside into the classroom also provides an invaluable opportunity to engage in the practice community and receive feedback from multiple sources. For example, social work educators have brought classroom discussions of policy and practice into the public domain through the use of social media (Young, 2014; Hitchcock & Battista, 2013).
The use of infographics as a classroom assignment is used in higher education (Dyjur & Li, 2015; Kos, & Sims, 2014; Martix, & Hodson, 2014), although less is known about its use in social work education. Infographics are digital tools that include images and text that communicate and share information (Joosten, 2012). Infographics allow for quick sharing and/or transfer of knowledge through various social media platforms to reach a large audience. For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention frequently use infographics to communicate information about vaccines, health disparities data, and prevention practices (Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, n.d.). The use of infographics in social work education can engage students in the real-world application. Also, students have the opportunity to discover and evaluate information related to important social problems and social work practice in new and very public ways.
This workshop will review how three social work educators collaborated to develop, implement and evaluate an infographic assignment across the social work curriculum. This workshop will provide a view into teaching infographics in social work education from preparation to the final reflective assignment. The assignment engages students in discussions about privacy, public image, professional communication skills, assessing open-source information, and using social media to demonstrate competency and integrity in social work practice. These competencies align with the educational policy and accreditation standards set forth by CSWE (2015). Examples of student infographics will be shared to illustrate outcomes and assignment flexibility. Participants will be able to review findings from a survey evaluation distributed to elicit student feedback, as well as student impressions of the use of infographics as a professional tool. The presentation will conclude with a discussion on lessons learned and future directions.
We’d love it if you share your experiences with trying out this assignment in the classroom. Please leave a comment with this blog post.
References:
Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. (n.d.). Infographics. Retrieved May 21, 2016, from http://www.cdc.gov/socialmedia/tools/infographics.html
Council on Social Work Education. (2015). Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards. Washington, DC: Author.
Dyjur, P., & Li, L. (2015). Learning 21st Century Skills by Engaging in an Infographics Assessment. In Proceedings of the IDEAS: Designing Responsive Pedagogy (pp. 62–71). University of Calgary. Retrieved from http://dspace.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/1880/50860/1/7%20Learning%2021st%20-%20Dyjur%20%26%20Li.pdf
Joosten, T. (2012). Social media for educators: strategies and best practices. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Hitchcock, L. I., & Battista, A. (2013). Social Media for Professional Practice: Integrating Twitter with Social Work Pedagogy. The Journal of Baccalaureate Social Work, 18(special issue), 33-45.
Kos, B. A., & Sims, E. (2014). Infographics: The New 5-Paragraph Essay. In 2014 Rocky Mountain Celebration of Women in Computing. Laramie, WY, USA. Retrieved from http://scholar.colorado.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=atlas_gradpapers
Martix, S., & Hodson, J. (2014). Teaching with infographics: practicing new digital competencies and visual literacies. Journal of pedagogic development, 4 (2). Retrieved from: http://www.beds.ac.uk/jpd/volume-4-issue-2/teaching-with-infographics
Young, J. (2014). iPolicy: Exploring and Evaluating the use of iPads in a Social Welfare Policy Course. Journal of Technology in Human Services, 32(1-2), 39-53.
How to cite this post:
Hitchcock, L.I., Sage, M. & Jones, N.P. (2018, April 13). #SW2018 Visualizing Data: Infographic Assignments across the Social Work Curriculum [Blog Post]. Retrieved from: https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2018/04/13/sw2018-visualizing-data-infographic-assignments-across-the-social-work-curriculum/
