The unprecedented shift into teleworking; a personal story about working remotely in social work education

Posted By on Jun 15, 2020

Editor’s Note: Agata Dera, MSW, is an Associate and LiveSupport Specialist with the Columbia School of Social Work’s (CSW) Online Campus, where she works with social work faculty and students in online courses to optimize the digital learning environment. In this post, she discussed how she  transitioned from an office space to remote working. As  many of us are  working at home because of the COVID19 pandemic, Agata offers practical suggestions and encouragement to this new way of working for many social work professionals.  You can connect with Agata on Twitter at @agataddera.

Over the past few weeks of this year, as the world stands together in the face of a pandemic, I have witnessed so many of my colleagues experience an unprecedented shift to working from home. As according to Forbes (Eisenberg, 2020), it is likely that more than half of our workforce is now working remotely, I cannot help but to reminisce of my transition into a virtual workforce. I hope that by sharing my story with you, you will have the insight I wish I once had to enhance your productivity and overall success. 

For the past several years, I have been solely working from home due to severe health issues. Working remotely provided me with the flexibility I needed to be able to recover from several major spinal cord surgeries while also continuing my professional career. I truly believe that for me, being able to work from home is a blessing as my career is such a big part of my identity. 

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Fostering a spirit of collaboration with Social Work Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Posted By on Jun 8, 2020

Editor’s note: When COVID19 cases started rising in the US in March 2020, institutions of higher education made significant decisions that required instructors and students to pivot the delivery and design of courses almost overnight.  In this blog post, an instructional team from Columbia University’s School of Social Work (CSSW) detail how they approached changes to their course using trauma-informed teaching strategies.  The team consists of Matthea Marquart, Director of CSSW’s Online MSW Program, Katherine Seibel, Legislative and Policy Analyst at a nonprofit promoting young people’s wellbeing, and Nicole Wong, Director of Support, Advocacy, & Violence Prevention at Vassar College.  For more information related to this post, please reach out to Matthea at @MattheaMarquart. 

Our spring semester online course, which is part of Columbia University School of Social Work’s (CSSW) Master’s of Science in Social Work program, began in March 2020, with our first class session on March 10.  The next day, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, and the next week was spring break.  Columbia University, which is located in New York City, had already been taking steps to protect student safety, such as moving residential courses online, but our course was already online, with our students located across the United States. 

medical mask on top of the keyboard of an open and on laptop

As a result, the policy impact that most affected our course came with the University’s announcement on March 20 that all spring semester courses would be graded pass/fail.  This policy impact freed us to make significant changes to our course assignments and grading policies mid-semester, in collaboration with each other as the instructional team, as well as with the students.  We also implemented trauma-informed teaching strategies in response to the changing circumstances in the world, which had a significant impact on students and which we recognized could contribute to increased experiences of trauma.  Trauma-informed teaching  recognizes that past and ongoing trauma can impact current student success, and employs strategies to foster a supportive environment and reduce barriers to learning. An example is sharing power with students through collaboration and choice about course decisions.  

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