A review of Teaching & Learning in Social Work for 2020
2020 was a strange year with many firsts for me – first global pandemic, first sabbatical, first live sessions in an online course, etc. Because of all these firsts, blogging took a bit of back seat to some of my other projects and goals for the year. I had four goals for the blog over the year, and some minor successes. They were:
#1 – Publish 30 posts – only published 19
#2 – Enhance the reach of the blog – there were almost 45,500 visitors from 153 different countries with each visitor spending an average of 1 minute on the blog.
#3 – Build a culture of engagement – only had 10 comments for the year.
#4 – Publish content in other places – there will be two articles in 2021 with content from the blog.
Outside of these goals, I did update content on the blog and created an archive page. The two most popular blog posts of 2020 were:
A Love Letter to Social Workers on the Front Lines of COVID-19 (4/10/20) by Melanie Sage with over 24,000 visits
The Power of Lighting in a Virtual Classroom: Tips on Improving Webcam Lighting for Online Educators (3/16/20) by Agata Dera with over 3,000 visits
Here are the blog posts from 2020 organized by categories:
Assignments:
- Podcast Assignment for the Social Work Classroom (1/15/20)
- Tech-based Assignments for Remote Teaching & Learning in Social Work (3/24/20)
- Pinterest Assignment for the Social Work Classroom (9/16/20)
COVID-related:
- Being a Social Work Student in the times of COVID-19: One way to share, document & support
- (3/20/20)Social Work in the Times of COVID-19: One way to share, document & support (3/20/20)
- A Love Letter to Social Workers on the Front Lines of COVID-19 (4/10/20)
- Fostering a spirit of collaboration with Social Work Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic (6/8/20)
- Virtual Volunteering for Social Work Education during COVID19 (7/22/20)
Field Education:
- A Collection of Resources for New and Emerging Field Directors (2/7/20)
- Virtual Field Education: Harnessing Technology and Campus Partnerships to Provide Learning Opportunities (5/14/20)
Professional Collaboration Networks:
- Twitter for your Professional Collaboration Network (PCN)(1/31/20)
- How do you do relational Twitter?: Developing your Professional Collaboration Network (2/14/20)
- Using Twitter at a Professional Conference (3/12/20)
- Academic and Professional Blogging (4/24/20)
- Professional Collaboration Networks for Social Work Practice (8/26/20)
Online Teaching/Remote Working:
- The Power of Lighting in a Virtual Classroom: Tips on Improving Webcam Lighting for Online Educators (3/16/20)
- The unprecedented shift into teleworking; a personal story about working remotely in social work education (6/15/20)
- Book Group Discussion Guide for Teaching Social Work with Digital Technology (7/2/20)
Racial Justice:
Reviewing the list, I am glad to see blog posts that addressed the some of the challenging events of 2020 such as the COVID-19 pandemic and racial injustice in higher education. I am also thankful for the many guest posts written by colleagues wanting to share their experience and knowledge through this blog. The series of posts about professional collaboration networks is especially meaningful to me as it came out of a Think Tank I attended back in 2019, and resulted in this article.
All of this gives me pause as I get curious about how to plan for 2021. After two years of not tracking analytics or encouraging more comments from readers, I realize that I need to learn more about these topics as well as search engine optimization (SEO) in order level-up the blog. I also wonder about ways to get feedback from other social work educators about topics of interests or new directions for the blog. I would like to make this blog more meaningful for other educators and practitioners. Finally, I realize that I need more manageable goals for the blog (i.e. easier to measure, attainable, broken down into smaller actions, etc.).
So what should I do with Teaching & Learning in Social Work in 2021? Here are some initial goals for the first quarter of 2021:
- Publish two blog posts per month (January, February, March & April)
- Learn about blogging analytics and SEO (will finally take advantage of my institution’s access to LinkedIn Learning)
- Create a feedback survey for the blog
Any thoughts on these goals? Please send me a tweet (@laurelhitchcock) or submit a comment this post if you have an idea for future blog posts. Happy New Year!
Hitchcock, L. I. (2021, January 6). A review of Teaching & Learning in Social Work for 2020 [Blog Post]. Retrieved from Teaching & Learning in Social Work Blog: https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2021/01/06/a-review-of-teaching-learning-in-social-work-for-2020/
