Review of #BPDTX16
I spent five days in Dallas last week (3/30/16-4/3/16) at the 2016 Annual Program Meeting for the Association of Baccalaureate Program Directors, one of my favorite social work conferences. My good colleague, Dr. Jimmy Young of California State University – San Marcos, wasn’t able to attend this year’s conference, but wrote a blog post about the pre-conference workshop we worked on with Dr. Stephen Baldridge of Abilene Christian University. As a member of the BPD Technology Committee, I spent most of my time at sessions from the Technology Track. Here are some of the sessions I attended and tweeted about during the conference:
– Dr. Becky Anthony & Ms. Jennifer Jewell from Salisbury University presented on A Social Media How-To Guide for BSW Educators – This interactive workshop explores research and best practices to help educators understand how to utilize social media in their courses and departments. Pros, cons, and goals will be discussed. Also, a student perspective will be reviewed. Attendees are encouraged to share their own experiences and strategies.
– Dr. Thomas Felke from Florida Gulf Coast University presented on Revealing Patterns, Improving Service Delivery, and Empowering Communities: GIS for Social Work – Social work students and practitioners armed with GIS technology can better understand community needs, measure environmental forces, and improve service delivery. However, few social work departments nationwide offer GIS courses. This session introduces participants to GIS uses within social work and provides real-world examples of social work applications of GIS.
– Dr. Melanie Sage & Mr. Todd Sage from the University of North Dakota presented on Professional Online Identities for Students and Faculty – In today’s internet-reliant culture, a prospective meeting with a social worker or faculty member is often preceded by an internet search. Social workers have the opportunity to shape their professional online identities. Tools and resources are presented to help social work educators support students in developing online identities. Here is a link to a blog post about their presentation.
Here is a link to a Storify transcript I created of tweets from the conference. You’ll see my tweets about each of these sessions as well tweets from other social work educators. Also, here are links to blog posts about my three presentations at the conference:
Social Media and Technology Basics for the Social Work Educator
Using Pinterest in Undergraduate Social Work Education
Service Learning Labs: Integrating experiential learning across a BSW Curriculum
How to cite this post:
Hitchcock, L. I. (2016, April 9). Review of #BPDTX16 [Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2016/04/09/review-of-bpdtx16/.
Service Learning Labs: Integrating experiential learning across a BSW Curriculum – #BPDTX16
Day 4 of #BPDTX16 for me and my last presentation will be at 9:30 AM today. I will be talking about the work I have been doing with my colleague, Dr. Scott Batey, along with many other partners at UAB and in the Birmingham community. Unfortunately, Scott was not able to attend BPD this year, but he feels confident I won’t mess up the presentation. For our session, we really wanted to highlight the development of service learning labs in our BSW curriculum as a case study, hopefully offering tips and ideas for others wanting to incorporate more service learning into their assignments, courses & curricula.
Here are the learning objectives for the session:
1. Understand how to plan and engage multiple partners in developing a curriculum-based service learning project to support student and community outcomes.
2. Determine how educators can duplicate the planning process for curriculum-based service learning projects at their own institutions.
3. Appreciate the role of professional collaboration in the planning and development of service-learning projects across a curriculum.
You can access a copy of the slides here: https://www.slideshare.net/secret/5GRJ7Qx3hVLzuG
Using Pinterest in Undergraduate Social Work Education – #BPDTX16
March 31st will be Day Two for me at #BPDTX16 and I will be presenting on how Pinterest can be incorporated into undergraduate education. My UAB colleague, Dr. Lisa Baker, and I developed and implemented a social media-based assignment using Pinterest in our HBSE course sequence last year. Even though Lisa won’t be able attending BPD this year, I’m looking forward to talking about this assignment and our assessment outcomes. The session is from 11:15 AM-12:30 PM in Majestic 4 on 3/31/16.
We will focus on how practitioners are increasingly using social media to interact with client systems. As such, educators and students should recognize the role social media plays in developing practice related competencies and connecting to a larger learning network. Our workshop presents the development, implementation and evaluation of Pinterest assignments in undergraduate education.
Learning objectives for this session include:
1. Participants will explore the use of Pinterest as a teaching tool in undergraduate courses, following an evidence-based model of assignment development, implementation and evaluation.
2. Participants will become aware of the context in which students complete social media assignments and the role social media plays in helping students develop professional self.
3. Participants will discuss caveats to developing social media assignments and learn how such assignments help develop practice competencies.
Here is a link to the slides from the presentation: Using Pinterest in Undergraduate Social Work Education Slides on SlideShare.
Also, you can download the two rubrics from the presentation here:
Social Media and Technology Basics for the Social Work Educator – #BPDTX16
Welcome to #BPDTX2016! Stephen Baldridge of Abilene Christian University and I are facilitating a pre-conference workshop about social media basics for the social work educator on 3/30/16 from 1:00 – 4:00 PM. We originally created this workshop with Jimmy Young of California State University – San Marcos, but he won’t be making it to BPD this year.
Our goal for the workshop is to introduce social work educators to the world of social and digital technologies that can be effectively incorporated into the classroom. We will help bridge the gap between understanding and best practice by demonstrating how to use some of the social media platforms. Upon completion, participants will have several practical, “usable” tools to immediately implement in their courses.
Learning Objectives for the workshop include:
1. Understand how a minimum of 3 social media platforms can be incorporated into assignments for social work courses.
2. Recognize/identify a minimum of 2 ways using social and digital media can promote professional development among social work educators.
3. Appreciate the role of collaboration to support the development and implementation of technology-based assignments.
Slides for the presentations can be accessed here: http://www.slideshare.net/secret/CSjdjAcaZ9UYHo
Here is a link to my blog post about My Guidelines for using Digital & Social Tech in the Classroom and Beyond.
Using #MacroSW in the Classroom
#MacroSW is a live weekly Twitter chat for anyone interested in macro-level social work practice. The chat partners include practitioners and academics with a passion for working with policy, communities and organizations. In full self-disclosure, I have been an active partner with #MacroSW for almost a year now, and value the opportunity to be part of this online community.
Why use #MacroSW in the classroom?
Simply put, it is an incredibly engaging way to learn about macro social work practice. When students participate in an hour-long chat, they are engaging in the principles of Connected Learning, a theory that incorporates the digital technology into the learning process (Ito et al., 2013). Connected Learning suggests that learning in the 21st century must be driven simultaneously by the interests of the learner (Interest-Driven) and the academic requirements (Academically-Oriented) while occurring in an environment that supports openness, sharing and feedback with peers and others (Peer-Supported) (Ito et al., 2013). For example, if the goal of your class is for students to learn social work practice with communities and organizations, #MacroSW offers weekly topics related to social welfare policy, research, and practice with community and organizations (Interest-Driven) that are hosted and attended by a variety of social work professionals including students, academics, policy analysts and practitioners (Peer-Supported). Each chat includes a blog post on our website, numerous resources for the week’s topic, and a chat transcript which allow any social work educator to easily incorporate #MacroSW into a course or a specific assignment (Academically-Oriented).
How can you incorporate #MacroSW into your class?
There are four things you want to consider when creating an assignment with #MacroSW in your class:
1. Setting-up a Twitter Account: Students will need to create a free Twitter account, understand the basics of how to use Twitter, and be familiar with how to participate in a live chat. As the instructor, you will want to model for your students so set-up your own account too. Here are some resources:
Teaching & Learning in Social Work by Laurel Iverson Hitchcock is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Laurel Hitchcock
Photo Credit: Jared Bash
