#SWDE 2019 – Imagining Social Work Education into the Future: Skills for Social Justice in a Technology-Mediated World
On April 11th, Melanie Sage, Ellen Belluomini, and I presented at the 2019 Social Work Distance Education Conference in San Antonio, TX on a topic that is beginning to get some traction in social work – the future of social work education for practice with technology. Technology is profoundly shaping the world, especially in the delivery of education. Concurrently, services like telehealth, predictive analytics, and technology aids (i.e. Fitbits, apps and home listening devices) affect service delivery. Given these changes, how do social workers promote social justice and support privacy and equity? And consider needs of the vulnerable while harnessing technology for good? How does social work redefine the profession in the face of algorithmic solutions to human problems? Our goal was to introduce a dialogue about what’s happening, where are gaps in social work education, and how programs might reinvent in a rapidly-changing environment.
If you were not all to make the session or didn’t attend the conference, we are sharing information from the presentation, to make the content more accessible to all and to help promote more discourse among social workers about the future of the profession.
Here are the slides from the presentation:
We also created a handout on Google Docs with some of the details from the presentations:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q9QOqHMOBxCUSp3-rdBypcTles2v8wQSOxUIF0jWhMU/edit?usp=sharing. Please feel free to add comments to the handout.
Finally, here is our original text proposal:
Technology is shaping the world in profound ways. Technology will continue to play an ever-increasing role in social work education, including distance education, continuing education to meet workforce needs related to technology-mediated services, and personalized degrees based on learner needs (Aoun, 2017; CSWE, 2018; O’Neal, 2017) . At the same time, technology is affecting clients; through the increased use of telehealth services, predictive analytics that project who will benefit from which services or even provide diagnostics, and the use of technology self-help aids, from wearable tracking (e.g. Fitbits) to home listening devices (Berzin, Singer, Chan, 2015; Coulton, Goerge, Putnam-Hornstein, & de Haan, 2015). How do social work educators and administrators advocate for justice for their students in the face of data-driven reporting which promises easy answers to complex problems? How do social work programs train students to practice in the technology-mediated world and still promote social justice, consider the needs of the most vulnerable, and support issues of privacy and equity? How does social work redefine itself as a profession in the face of increasing faith in algorithmic solutions to human problems? This panel will introduce a dialogue about: 1) what is already happening; 2) the gaps in social work education related to working alongside machines; 3) understanding the effects of big data on our field; and 4) how the profession might redefine itself in a rapidly changing environment where it may be necessary to demonstrate what humans can do that machines cannot.
We will start by introducing the statistics related to online degree delivery. Our first panelist will share some of the emerging delivery models for degrees, including personalized education, industry-delivered degrees, mobile phone degrees, and what this means for social work education. Then as part of the panel, we invite the audience to participate in a dialogue by asking to share their thoughts about which of these tools promote and limit social justice for students and their future clients and how educators might respond collectively and institutionally.
Next, we will discuss and raise questions about the impact of services to clients, including statistics related to technology-mediated health delivery and growth predictions, including a prediction that 50% of health delivery will be online by 2022. Our second panelist will share examples of how agencies are currently using big data to choose services and predict outcomes for clients,including mobile mental health, on-demand counseling services, and the effects of algorithms on service delivery. We will ask those in attendance about what students (especially those who are future supervisors and administrators) will need to know about ethics and justice issues related to big data.
Finally, we will discuss methods to engage faculty and administrators’ in leading the social work profession into the future of technology integrated practice. She will address the obstacles present in educational processes and solutions addressing these obstacles. Using a Community of Practice model, she will help participants build off the information presented by the panel, identifying where they can affect the most change in their system to support a rapidly changing educational climate.
References:
Aoun, J. E. (2017). Robot-proof: Higher education in the age of artificial intelligence. The MIT Press.
Berzin, S. C., Singer, J., & Chan, C. (2015). Practice innovation through technology in the digital age: A grand challenge for social work (Grand Challenges for Social Work Initiative Working Paper No. 12). Cleveland, OH: American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare.
Coulton, C. J., Goerge, R., Putnam-Hornstein, E., & de Haan, B. (2015). Harnessing big data for social good: A grand challenge for social work (Grand Challenges for Social Work Initiative Working Paper No. 11). Cleveland, OH: American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare.
Council on Social Work Education. (2018). Envisioning the future of social work: Report to the CSWE Futures Task Force APril 2018. Retrieved from: https://www.cswe.org/About-CSWE/Governance/Board-of-Directors/2018-19-Strategic-Planning-Process/CSWE-FTF-Four-Futures-for-Social-Work-FINAL-2.aspx
Drouin, M., Vartanian, L., & Birk, S. (2014). A Community of Practice Model for Introducing Mobile Tablets to University Faculty. Innovative Higher Education, 39(3), 231–245. https://doi-org.libproxy.chapman.edu/10.1007/s10755-013-9270-3
O’Neil, C. (2017). Weapons of math destruction: How big data increases inequality and threatens democracy. New York: Broadway Books.
How to cite this blog post:
Sage, M., Hitchcock, L.I. & Belluomini, E. (2019, April 13). #SWDE 2019 Imagining Social Work Education into the Future: Skills for Social Justice in a Technology-Mediated World [Blog Post]. Retrieved from:
https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2019/04/13/swde-2019-imagining-social-work-education-into-the-future-skills-for-social-justice-in-a-technology-mediated-world/
