Key Components for Effective Social Work Assignments

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Jan 26, 2023 | 0 comments

As social work educators, we create assignments to give our students opportunities to learn about the profession and develop competencies needed for social practice. Assignments also offer a way to assess if students are growing in their understanding of how to be professional social workers. Assignments can range from reading a chapter in the course textbook to a 20-page research paper and more. I have shared many assignments on this blog that I have used in various classes. What I have learned over the years is that it takes effort and structure to create a quality assignment that will help students connect what they are learning in the classroom to their field experience and beyond. In this blog post, I share my thoughts on how to structure an assignment that is clear and contextualized for the social work profession, using three simple questions – Why?, What?, and How?

Why?

With this question, you are trying to explain why students need to do this assignment—explaining “the why” of an assignment gives students an understanding of how the assignment fits into learning about the social work profession and how it fits into the course. You are giving students a general sense of the project before the details while also helping them understand how this assignment will inform their future practice as social workers. To get started with drafting the why of an assignment, ask yourself the following questions:

• What are the course objectives or student learning outcomes?
• What are the social work competencies addressed by your course (think about the competencies outlined by Council on Social Work Education [CSWE])?
• What are the social work values addressed in your course (think about the National Association of Social Worker’s Code of Ethics)?
• How does your course fit into the overall curriculum of the social work program?

Answering these questions about your course should help you define your reasons for including assignments as part of your course. Not only will this help you explain to students why these assignments are important, but you will also discover keywords from the competencies or course objectives that you can incorporate into your assignment’s purpose statement. Also, you will be able to add a brief reminder of what was previously learned in the course (or other courses) and how the assignment builds on this content. Lastly, you will want to write a brief statement about the learning objectives for the assignment.

Here is an example from an infographic assignment I developed with colleagues:

Purpose:

This infographic assignment aims to help students practice advocacy & brokering skills as it relates to a human service issue and/or topic. Students are expected to create an infographic that provides statistics and/or facts on a chosen social problem.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of this assignment, students will be able to:

1. Create an engaging infographic that provides awareness and/or describes preventative measures related to a chosen topic
2. Conduct research to identify statistics, resources, and other data relevant to a chosen topic
3. Increase ability to interpret and communicate a social work topic
4. Demonstrate communication and advocacy skills by sharing and promoting one’s infographic via social media

As you write the learning objectives for the assignment, I recommend using Bloom’s Taxonomy to identify action words for your objectives. Briefly, Bloom’s Taxonomy is a classification system for learning outcomes and is commonly used in higher education.

What?

Next, you will want to explain “the what” of the assignment, focusing on what the students will be doing for the assignment, and what they need to do to complete it. Here is where I think about the learning I want the students to demonstrate as part of the assignment. I have found CSWE’s definition of holistic competence helpful when considering what I want students to gain from an assignment. Specifically, CSWE recognizes that social workers demonstrate their professional competence with four dimensions – their knowledge, skills, values, and ability to think critically and reflect. When applied to an assignment, I will consider each of the four dimensions with questions like these:

• Knowledge – What content do the students need to learn, discuss, etc.? What do they need know they know about a topic? Models, theories, or structures?
• Skills – What skills do they need to demonstrate? Techniques or methods?
• Values – What core social work values connect to this assignment? Service, Integrity, Social Justice, Dignity and Worth of the Person, Importance of Human Relationships, or Competence?
• Cognitive and affective processes – How will critical thinking appear in this assignment? Critical Reflection? How can this assignment help students develop professional judgment?

Again, Bloom’s Taxonomy and CSWE’s Social Work Competencies can be helpful here. Do not be afraid of incorporating language or phrasing from these sources. You can review the educators’ resources on the CSWE’s website. I like to “collect” social work assignments as models for myself. When appropriate, I acknowledge the resource, person, or organization who inspired the assignment with a brief note at the end or in the footnote.

Next, I state (or re-state) the genre of the assignment (i.e., paper, presentation, discussion post, exam, etc.) and give some guidelines for structure and formatting, such as a page or word limit, type of software program to use, or writing style. Of course, these guidelines will vary by the type of assignment. Here is an example from the same infographic assignment:

Please use the following guidelines when creating your infographic:

• Include APA-style references and in-text citations to support that information in your assignment.
• Use only images and other visual content that are in the public domain.
• Apply the rule of three when selecting colors for your infographic.
• Select fonts from the primary categories of font families and stick to a font palette.

How?

For this question, I like to include a list of all the tasks a student needs to complete in chronological order, which can help them plan for the assignments. Please think of this as scaffolding, an educational technique that supports students as they learn new ideas or skills. Briefly, scaffolding includes modeling as the instructor, practicing (either as a group or individually), and then providing resources so the students can accomplish the assignment independently. For this example, here is the task list I provide for the infographic assignment:

To complete this assignment, each student will do the following tasks:

1. Review an infographic as part of a class discussion
2. Review the course resources about how to create an infographic
3. Identify the topic for your infographic
4. Collect data and information needed for the infographic
5. Create a draft infographic
6. Get feedback from a peer as part of a class discussion
7. Revise and submit their final infographic
8. Share the infographic with others outside the class as appropriate
9. Complete the self-reflection journal about your learning

The goal here is to draft a task list that helps students think through the logical steps of an assignment without micro-managing it for them. Two strategies that help with this include:

Tying the tasks back to previously learned content – For example, when reviewing an exemplar infographic as part of a class discussion, I will often select an infographic about a topic that the students are already familiar with (i.e., a topic from a previous course or one already covered in class). This helps to re-enforce the topic with the students and allows me to focus on the skills of creating an infographic rather than answering many questions about a new topic.

Giving students as much choice as possible – For example, I prefer that students select their own topics for assignments when possible. Other ways to give choice include letting students select the software or web-based program they prefer to complete an assignment and design options. As you may already know, giving students choices related to assignments supports a trauma-informed approach to teaching and offers students opportunities to deepen their knowledge about a topic of interest to them.

Finally, I provide information on how the assignment will be assessed. This helps the students understand the assignment’s expectations and provides transparency about how I grade. Rubrics are one of my favorite tools for grading as I can use them with any assignment and share descriptions of the criteria I will be using to assess student work. You can see an example of the rubric used for this infographic assignment here. Additionally, you might want to consider using a meta rubric, which is a rubric for your assignment rubric. A meta rubric will help you quickly identify where the assignment needs updates for the next semester.

How do you come up with assignments for your social work courses? I am interested in hearing about your processes and assignments. Please share in the comment section below.

How to cite:

Hitchcock, L.I. (2023, January 26). Key Components for Effective Social Work Assignments. Teaching and Learning in Social Work. https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2023/01/26/key-components-for-effective-social-work-assignments/