Call for Contributions: Help Us Expand the Community-Engaged Learning Toolkit
My colleagues, Drs. Nathalie Jones, Melanie Sage, and I are excited to invite submissions for an expanded edition of the Professionalism for Community-Engaged Learning Student Workbook and a new Educator’s Guide. This expanded resource will enhance teaching and learning by offering structured assignments, reflective activities, and instructional strategies that prepare students for professionalism in community-based learning.
About the Project
The Professionalism for Community-Engaged Learning Student Workbook is part of the Professionalism for Community-Engaged Learning Toolkit. This Toolkit provides resources and learning activities emphasizing the practical skills and knowledge necessary for novice student learners to thrive in community-engaged learning projects (such as volunteering and service learning) in higher education.
Drawing from Social Work Education and applicable to other fields, this workbook is designed to assist student learners in developing the knowledge and skills essential for a professional demeanor during community-engaged learning projects, concentrating on behavior, appearance, and communication in oral, written, and electronic formats. The workbook includes three sections:
Use of an ADEI Assessment Tool to Examine Social Work Curricula
On October 25, 2024, during the Annual Program Meeting for the Council on Social Work Education in Kansas City, MO, my UAB colleagues (Colleen Fisher, Mary Jacque Carroll and Ron Pitner) and I presented an assessment tool developed by Melissa Freedman, MSW, to review syllabi and courses as an effort to ensure the integration of antiracism, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI) within our program curricula at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Department of Social Work. We used this tool to assess course content in our Bachelor’s, Master’s and Field Education courses. In this blog post, we provide access to the tool and slides from the presentation.
Call for Submissions: 101 Things to Do with a Social Work Degree
My colleague, Dr. Melanie Sage and I are excited to invite submissions for our upcoming book, tentatively called 101 Things to Do with a Social Work Degree. This book aims to showcase social workers’ diverse and impactful roles across various settings. We seek contributions in English from social workers actively practicing or utilizing their social work degrees in traditional or unique settings at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels.
Ideal Contributors:
We are looking for social workers who:
Key Components for Effective Social Work Assignments
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?
Tips for the new Social Work Adjunct Instructor
In my role as the Director of our undergraduate social work program this summer, I have been onboarding several new adjunct instructors to our Department. It is a fun process as new adjuncts bring new ideas and energy to the role, and I have been reminded of my early days in social work education as an adjunct instructor. I taught statistics to social work students for four years while working on my Ph.D. I often think back to that experience as my boot camp for my career as an academic in social work education. One of my teaching mantras is “if I can teach stats, I can teach anything.” If you are unsure that you want to be an adjunct instructor, please read this post by my colleague, Dr. Trish Desrosier, at Western Kentucky University, who will explain why you might want to teach a class for your local social work program. If you already have a new adjunct teaching position, congratulations and welcome! In this post, I write about a list of tips I share with our new social work adjuncts based on my experiences and their questions.
Collect the key course materials as soon as you can. Start by getting a copy of the course syllabus as soon as possible, along with the textbook and other materials such as PowerPoint slides, lecture notes, and handouts. This includes digital content from the institution’s learning management system. The syllabus is your road map for the course, and the other content will make the ride through the semester smooth.
Teaching & Learning in Social Work by Laurel Iverson Hitchcock is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
