Virtual Volunteering for Social Work Education during COVID19

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Jul 22, 2020 | 2 comments

Each semester, I teach courses with service learning requirements in our BSW program.  As many of you know, service learning combines volunteer work with critical reflection so that students can make connections between real-life experiences and their academic course work.  It is consider a high-impact educational practice in higher education and the pedagogical constructs embedded within service learning are a natural fit for social work education.  Many undergraduate social work programs require volunteer hours for admission into their professional social work programs.  At the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), our students volunteer for 20 hours as part of a semester-long, one-credit hour lab course, which is connected to a practice course.  While volunteering in community-based settings, our BSW students get experiences with different types of agencies, social problems, client populations, and activities that social workers do on a daily basis.  Then, they bring these experiences back into the classroom to deepen their understanding of generalist social work practice with individuals, groups and organizations.  Students take three service learning lab courses prior to their field semester, which gives them a grounding for what to expect during their field placement along with 60 hours of volunteer experience for their professional development and resume. 

In March 2020, the COVID19 pandemic disrupted our lives and how we teach our courses.  Within the span of a week, I had to shift over 100 students in our three service learning lab courses from doing in-person volunteering at five community locations in the Greater Birmingham area to doing virtual volunteer work. In this blog post, I want to share how I did this and offer resources for social work educators who also need virtual volunteer opportunities for their students. 

Remote Volunteer Activities 
The first thing I did when COVID19 shut down our campus was reach out to my contacts at our current service learning partner agencies.  I wanted to let them know about the changes with our students, and also check in with their need for volunteer work during this time.  I quickly learned that they were also are struggling with challenges related to COVID19.  Just like me, they were dealing with lots of changes in short time frames so frequent and brief communication with lots of empathy worked well.  I also checked in with our Director of Field to find out what was being done for our students in field practicum.  This is when I learned about the contingency planning that all social work field programs were doing and the development of remote learning assignments for field education.  In collaboration with our community partner agencies, I developed similar remote activities for our students to do as a way to complete their service learning hours.  Each activity was given a time value such as one or two hours of volunteering. Students could select any activity from a list specific to their service learning agency. If the student completed the activity, they got credit for the hours. All completed documents (handouts, videos, photos, etc.) were shared with the community partners with student permission.  Here are some sample activities: 

• Making phone calls on behalf of the agency 
• Entering data
• Creating documents and/or products for your organization such as handouts, brochures, or videos
• Sending emails or text messages 
• Obtaining donations or in-kind contributions 
• Creating social media posts
• Researching a topic 

See this full list of the remote volunteer activities along with the directions.  I asked students to upload completed documents or proof of task (i.e. an email) into our learning management system as an assignment.  When assessing these assignments, I gave as much grace as I could to the students. If they followed the directions, completed the full task, and followed the course writing guideline (i.e. proper spelling and grammar), then I considered the activity complete and students got full credit (i.e. their hours of volunteer time).  

Virtual Volunteer Opportunities 
I also searched the internet for virtual volunteer opportunities for our students, and I was pleasantly surprised to find several options for virtual volunteering relevant to social work.  Here is the list I curated from many other resources: 

• 7 Cups – Free emotional support texting program that trains volunteers to do active listening with users
• Amnesty Decoders – A virtual platform that allows volunteers to help review pictures and documents to uncover human rights violations. 
• Be My Eyes – Free app that connects low-vision individuals with sighted volunteers for assistance. 
• Bookshare – Volunteers help create audio books for people with disabilities. 
• Catchafire – This is a search engine that helps individuals find short-time virtual volunteering opportunities.
• Crisis Textline – Similar to 7 Cups, this service uses trained volunteers to respond to texts from people in crisis. 
• DoSomething.Org – A digital platform with social justice campaigns and volunteer opportunities.
• Mapping Prejudice – This project looks at the structural racism of housing policies in Minneapolis, MN.  Volunteers can help read and transcribe deeds and other documents. 
• Missing Maps – An open, volunteer-driven map project that helps map places affected by disasters and war so humanitarian agencies can meet needs of vulnerable people. 
• Project Gutenberg – This free online library works to produce eBooks, and volunteers are needed to proofread and find eligible books.  Social work students could work on add social work books.
• SciStarter – This online community connects volunteers with researchers to help support scientific inquiry.  Projects range from physical to social science. 
• Smithsonian Digital Volunteers – Similar to the Project Gutenberg, volunteers help transcribe historical documents for the Smithsonian.  One of their current projects involves transcribing records from the Freedmen’s Bureau.  
• Translators without Borders – For students who are fluent in at least two languages, they can help translate in crisis situations. 
• United Nations Volunteers – The UN offers numerous projects from research to outreach that can be done in short periods of time. 
• Zooniverse.Org – This platform connects volunteers to different types of research projects include social science research. 

Some of our students tried volunteering with 7 Cups for the rest of the semester.  Similar to crisis phone line, users can create an account in 7 Cups, and then connect with a volunteer who will offer emotional support and active listening through texting.  To start volunteering, an individual sign-up for an account and completes a 30 minute training.  The platform creates an anonymous name for each volunteer so real names are kept confidential. Each volunteer has their own dashboard that keeps up with the number of chats, trainings, and other engagements completed.  Students can volunteer with individual clients or with group chats, and there are several additional training sessions available ranging from general listening skills to working with clients on specific topics such as anxiety, exercise motivation and self-care. Along with the students, I signed-up to volunteer. I wanted to see what the training looked like and understand how the platform worked.  This was helpful both in explaining the service to students and in answering their questions.  For example, one student encountered a client who inappropriate with her in a texting chat.  Together, we figured out how to report the problem and found additional training for her to complete on how to handle clients who make inappropriate comments. 

Overall, these virtual volunteer experiences worked during our shift to remote volunteering in our program. Students reported that they appreciated the option to finish their service learning hours remotely, and our service learning partner agencies appreciated the content and activities completed the students.  We will be trying these options again next semester.  How did you adjust your service learning courses due to the COVID19 pandemic?  Please share your experiences in the comments below.

How to cite this Post:

Hitchcock, L. I. (2020, July 22).  Virtual Volunteering for Social Work Education [Blog Post]. Retrieved from the Teaching and Learning in Social Work Blog: https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2020/07/22/virtual-volunteering-for-social-work-education-during-covid19/