Virtual Field Education: Harnessing Technology and Campus Partnerships to Provide Learning Opportunities
Editor’s Note: In this blog post, Michael Lynch, Clinical Assistant Professor of Field Education at the University at Buffalo’s School of Social Work, shares how his field program shifted their curriculum from in-person, place-based learning activities to remote learning during the national quarantine from the COVID19 pandemic in March 2020. Specifically, he talks about how social work field programs can leverage partnerships and opportunities within their own institution to quickly meet the educational needs of field students. You can connect with Michael at mrlynch2@buffalo.edu
With the intensification of the global pandemic in March 2020, most higher education programs in the United States quickly switched all of their courses to a distance-learning model. This disruption has forced social work instructors to think creatively about how to deliver content and experiences in new ways. For social work field education programs, this transition poses additional difficulty due to its client-facing, experiential nature. For example, students in field education typically are intervening directly with clients in settings like schools, mental health clinics, prisons, and hospitals. Students provide counseling, mentorship, and other forms of support directly to clients in an in-person environment.
At the University at Buffalo’s (UB) School of Social Work, we faced the unique challenge that all social work field education programs did: How can we best provide meaningful learning opportunities for our social work field students to grow and develop their skill sets while under a mandatory quarantine? Additionally, how can we quickly build these remote learning opportunities for our students given the typical time frame of a university semester?
As we looked at the possibilities within our field program at the UB School of Social Work, it became clear that we needed to utilize the resources and opportunities on our campus. Specifically, we leveraged technology and our partners across campus to provide innovative and remote educational opportunities for students participating in field education. Two of the partners, we approached were our UB Career Service Office and the UB Health and Wellness Program.
The two programs are fantastic examples of cultivating and maintaining multually beneficial partnerships with other University teams. Both Career Services and Health Wellness are long-time MSW field placement sites. In our interactions over the years, the partners demonstrated a commitment to student learning and we have frequently discussed ways to enhance and expand our partnerships. The COVID19 pandemic accelerated the speed by which the partnership grew.
Engaging Career Services Programs to support Social Work Professionalism
Through a partnership with our UB Career Services Department, students can participate in virtual workshops focused on topics like Salary Negotiation, Conducting a Job Search, and Interview Skills. After completing the workshops, students are then instructed to complete activities that apply the skills, including completing a job search road map and participating in simulated social work interviews via The Big Interview platform.
These activities fit nicely on a learning contract under Competency 1: Demonstrate Ethical and Professional Behavior (Council on Social Work Education [CSWE], 2015). Typically students demonstrate professional behavior through their on-site interactions with clients, colleagues, and supervisors. Forced to operate in a virtual-only world, these workshops allow students to develop essential skills related to professionalism. Further, by conducting mock virtual job interviews, students are preparing themselves for future interviews, either for field placements or for jobs, where the interview will be conducted virtually.
Each activity is customizable to the student’s learning needs and range from a few hours to as many as 14 hours. Most of the student participants were still receiving supervision from their pre-pandemic field educators, but were struggling to find meaningful learning activities. An online course was created in Blackboard (UB’s Learning Management System) that contained overviews of the assignments and served as a repository for the work completed by each field student. The assignments required students to discuss these activities in supervision, allowing field educators could assess student learning, and so the field educator and student could agree on the number of hours that will be allowed to count.
Partnering with Health & Wellness Services for Self-Care and Intervention Skills
Students are under an extreme amount of stress, as their personal, professional, and educational lives have all collided during the pandemic. To that end, we’ve partnered with UB’s Health and Wellness Department to allow MSW students to participate in a 4 week, online Koru Mindfulness program that can count for field hours. Students were assigned required mindfulness readings that complemented the training content and there was also a journaling component. Through the program, students developed skills such as belly breathing and body scans to help manage anxiety and stress. Students were then asked to apply these concepts to their fieldwork: How can they use the principles in practices with clients? How can the skills be part of their “intervention toolkit”? How can they incorporate these skills into everyday activities to help with self-care?
Due to overwhelming demand, UB Health & Wellness utilized our field students as student volunteers to facilitate additional course offerings to expand the number of students who could participate.
Students and field educators negotiated how many field hours would count for this experience, typically 6-10 hours. Additionally, field students were required to incorporate mindfulness practices at their field site. Some example ideas included training field educators on some elements of the mindfulness practice and implementing mindfulness practices into interventions used at the field site. Field educators assessed student progress through supervision, by asking the students what they are learning and how they are applying it. Multiple field educators have complimented this partnership; the students were able to train their field educators on the skills and principles they learned in class.
This activity fits nicely with Competency 6: Engage with Individuals, Families, Groups, Organizations, and Communities (CSWE, 2015). The mindfulness skills gleaned from the workshops allow students to apply a new theoretical framework to interventions across a wide range of populations and settings.
In just a few short weeks, social work field education has been forced to drastically rethink the traditional model of place-based field placements. As we continue to navigate the changes, it is becoming clearer that creatively using technology, in collaboration with our partners, can provide meaningful field learning opportunities. How are you utilizing your partnerships at your own institution to come up with new and innovative remote learning activities for your social work field students? Please share your experiences in the comments below.
References:
Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). (2015). Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards. CSWE: Arlington, VA. Retreived from https://www.cswe.org/getattachment/Accreditation/Accreditation-Process/2015-EPAS/2015EPAS_Web_FINAL.pdf.aspx
How to cite this blog post:
Lynch, M. (2020, May 14). Virtual Field Education: Harnessing Technology and Campus Partnerships to Provide Learning Opportunities [Blog Post]. Retrieved from Teaching and Learning in Social Work Blog: https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2020/05/14/virtual-field-education-harnessing-technology-and-campus-partnerships-to-provide-learning-opportunities/.
