Using Mobile Apps with with Social Work Students
Steven Sturman
In this blog post, Steven Sturman, Instructional Designer at the University at Buffalo’s School of Social Work writes about how social work educators can incorporate mobile apps into the social work classroom.
Mobile apps put a wealth of information and resources at your fingertips for a variety of topics from bullying prevention to political engagement. They have the potential to be very useful in both social work education and practice. Integrating apps into student education provides students with a safe environment to experience mobile technology while they are learning about how to use an app, and how it might be implemented into a clinical setting. Additionally, they can experiment with what technology will and won’t work for them, and determining how the technology will fit in their professional development.
There are several things to consider when integrating apps into your classes, including how to pick the right apps, how to make sure the apps align well with your learning objectives, and how to make sure that your usage meets the NASW Standards for Technology in Social Work Practice. When considering the adoption of apps for educational purposes instructors must assess:
- how the app aligns with their learning goals for the course;
- how the app builds upon skills and guides the students; and
- how the app provides a bridge from the classroom to real world application.
In this blog post, I will focus on the most complex of these considerations, how to integrate apps with your learning objectives for the course.
In order to effectively integrate mobile apps into education, the best place to start is by having a clear goal and understanding about how the app will support student learning. For example if your goal is to improve communication between the instructor and student then you may want to use an app like Remind, which allows you to directly message with students in real time and also track who has been reading the messages.
In some instances, the learning goals and choice of app may be easy to connect, such as using an app that tracks alcohol use as part of an assignment for a course dealing with addictions. In other instances, it may take a bit of thought on how to integrate an app into a class. If you are having a class do group assignments, you may suggest they use a project management app such as Trello to assign and track all of the required work, so that you can monitor their progress and participation levels. A learning goal here might be to use the app in a professional manner to plan out and complete various aspects of a larger assignment.
When you are introducing the app to your students, be sure to inform them about the overall learning goal(s) for the app. Making the connection between the technology and the desired outcome will help increase the student’s motivation in using the app and it will increase the likelihood that they are successful in integrating it into their learning.
Once you have identified your app and connected it to a learning goal, you need to plan how you will integrate the app into your class. You want to make sure the app is introduced at the appropriate time so that it will build upon the knowledge and skills that students have already learned in the class. By scaffolding the integration of the app into your class, you first provide the foundation for understanding the content that is covered or the process that is being facilitated by the app.
For example, if you are covering materials on how to counsel clients on financial issues, you would want to first discuss the importance of budgeting and the steps to creating a budget before introducing a finance tracking app. You could then ask students to use that app to create their own budget. This way the students will have the foundational knowledge that underlies how the app works, and better understand how they could use the app when working with clients. If the students do not have the foundational knowledge, they may struggle with understanding how the app fits in with the course content that they are learning, and they may not recognize how it can be useful to them in their professional practice.
When integrating an app into your class it is helpful to be explicit about how that app connects to the real world. For example, you may have your students use InfoGraphic and Poster Creator (available in the apple store) to create an infographic to advocate on an issue or to promote a program that is offered in an agency they may work for. These are both tasks that they may need to perform in their professional roles. Another example might include having students practice using an app as if they are in practice. If your students are getting ready to be placed in health care agencies, you may want to include an app that allows them to research medication side effects and interactions. You can have them practice using the app with a hypothetical client to reference and then discuss the side effects the client reported within the app.
To find out more about how to use mobile apps in your teaching, watch the video below and then visit the new blog Helping Apps for Practitioners and Educators – HAPPE from the University at Buffalo’s School of Social Work. This blog provides descriptions from other educators on how they use apps in their teaching and you will find reviews of apps. Each review provides information on how the app can be used in practice or education settings, and you can find more information on other considerations you need to take when integrating apps into your teaching.
How to cite this blog post:
Struman, S. (2018, October 26). Using Mobile Apps with Social Work Students [Blog Post]. Retrieved from: https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2018/10/26/using-mobile-apps-with-with-social-work-students/
