Follow-up to Live Twitter Chat on March 12, 2015

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Mar 16, 2015

This is a short post to follow-up on the second live #MacroSW chat that Jimmy Young and I hosted on March 12, 2015 about the documentary Inequality for All.  Once again, we had a great turnout and an inspired conversation.  Others have written more about this chat, so I am going to direct you to their posts:

1. Chat Statistics: The #MacroSW Chat folks reported that there were almost 100 people on the chat who shared 640 posts in one hour.  Here is a link to more analytics about the chat.

2. Chat Transcript: Here is a link to the chat transcript in Storify, a web-based program marketed as a story-telling software.  It also is a great tool for summarizing tweets from live chats and other types of conversations on Twitter.

3. Chat Summary:  Jimmy Young wrote a solid summary of the chat from the perspective of a social work educator.  Like Jimmy, I find live Twitter chats a compelling learning tool for bachelor-level social work students.  During the chats, I see students engaging in public discourse on vital policy issues with their peers and other professionals, not just in the classroom.  They are actively connecting with others, sharing and thinking critically about poverty issues when participating in a live chat. Look for more information near future from Jimmy and I about using live Twitter chats in the social work classroom.

Again, many thanks to #MacroSW chat and our host from @MSWatUSC,  Kristin Battista-Frazee (@porndaughter).  They sponsored, promoted and summarized the chat, and are all around great people!  Also, a big thanks to all the students, educators and practitioners who showed up and participated in our national conversation – including social work students and educators from University of Buffalo, University of Tennessee, University of Nebraska at Kearney University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Jacksonville State University to name a few.

How to cite this post:

Hitchcock, L. I. (2015, March 16). Follow-up to Live Twitter Chat on March 12, 2015[Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2015/03/16/follow-up-to-live-twitter-chat-on-march-12-2015/.

Using Social Media to teach and assess Macro/Policy-based Social Work Competencies – #BPD2015 Conference

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Mar 6, 2015

Today, I am presenting with Dr. Jimmy Young at the Association of Baccalaureate Social Work Program Director’s Annual 2015 Conference (3/6/15) about our social media assignment designed for social work students to learn about and try their hand at macro- and policy-practice skills.  In this workshop, we will describe how we developed, implemented and assessed this assignment which incorporates a documentary movie with a live Twitter chat.  We will discuss things we learned along the way and offer tips on how other educators can incorporate a similar assignment into their courses.  The learning objectives for this session include:

1. Understand how the social media platform Twitter can be incorporated into assignments for social work policy courses at the BSW-level.

2. Demonstrate how social work educators can assess attainment of competency among BSW students using a social media assignment paired with a Rubric for evaluation of the assignment’s learning outcomes.

3. Appreciate the role of professional collaboration in the development, implementation and assessment of social media-based assignments.

We have previously written about this assignment on our blogs:

 Special #MacroSW Chat October 28th at 8pm CST from JimmySW’s Blog

Follow-up to 10/28 #MacroSW Twitter Chat from Teaching Social Work Blog:

Here is a link to the Prezi that we will show during the presentation.

Our next live Twitter chat for this assignment will be on March 12, 2015 9 PM EST/8 PM CST and we invite you all to join us. The chat is sponsored by #MacroSW.  Click here for more details.

Podcasting with Social Work Students – #BPD2015 Conference

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Mar 5, 2015

I am presenting at the Association of Baccalaureate Social Work Program Director’s Annual 2015 Conference today (3/5/15) about podcasting with social work students, focusing on practical implications for course-based assignments.  In this workshop, I will describe how I developed a podcast assignment for BSW students and will offer tips on how other educators can incorporate a similar assignment into their courses.  The learning objectives for this session include:

1.Understanding how podcasting can be incorporated into assignments for social work courses at the BSW-level;

2. Describing how social work educators can assess attainment of competency among BSW students using a social media assignment; and

3. Appreciating the role of professional collaboration in the development, implementation and assessment using podcasting.

This presentation is based on a series of blog posts I wrote last year about podcasting in social work education:

1. Podcasting for Social Work Students, Part 1 – Describing the Assignment (1/16/14)

2. Podcasting for Social Work Students, Part 2 – Why use podcasting in the classroom (1/31/14)

3. Podcasting for Social Work Students, Part 3 – Advice for designing the assignment from Jonathan Singer (2/14/14)

Here is a link to the Prezi that I will show during the presentation (http://tiny.cc/PodcastPrezi_BPD2015).

Spring 2015 Live Twitter Chat for Social Work Students & Educators

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Feb 1, 2015

To help social work students and educators learn about Twitter and develop the skills to participate in a live chat, Jimmy Young of the University of Nebraska-Kearney and I (Laurel Hitchcock of University of Alabama at Birmingham) have designed an assignment for social work students that involves joining a live Twitter chat with other social work students, educators and practitioners from around the country to talk about important social and economic justice issues.  The assignment is designed for a policy or macro-practice course, but it can be incorporated into almost any social work course.  Here are the some of the details of the assignment:

1. Students watch the documentary Inequality for All, and then write a brief reaction paper to movie.

2. Then, students participate in the live Twitter chat scheduled for March 12, 2015 at 8:00 PM CST. This chat will be sponsored by #MacroSW, a bi-weekly Twitter chat focusing on macro social work practice issues, and hosted by Jimmy and myself.  During the chat, we will ask questions about the film and income inequality that will guide the flow of the conversation.

3. After the live chat, students write a brief self-reflection essay about the experience of participating in the chat.

While the written parts of the assignment are optional to participate in the chat, we highly recommend some type of reflection so students are engaged with the content from the documentary prior to the chat, and have an opportunity to critically assess how the experience can inform their future social work practice.  We have written in more detail about the assignment on respective blogs (see JimmySW’s Blog) which includes detailed instructions for the assignment, grading rubrics and tips on how to introduce your students to Twitter.  Our first chat was held on October 28, 2014, and you can read details about it here, including a transcript of tweets from the conversation.  There is no cost to educators or students to participate in the chat, and we welcome anyone, especially social work practitioners, to join the chat.

Because we are working to improve the chat and the assignment as an educational experience for social work students, we are very interested in any feedback from social work educators.  Please contact us (by clicking on our names below) if you plan to have your class or maybe a student group participate in the chat.  We also welcome questions.

Jimmy Young

Laurel Hitchcock

How to cite this post:

Hitchcock, L. I. (2015, February 1). Spring 2015 Live Twitter Chat for Social Work Students & Educators[Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2015/02/01/spring-2015-live-twitter-chat-for-social-work-students-educators/.

Twitter Project for HBSE Course

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Dec 12, 2014

Dr. Becky Anthony

Ms. Bobbi Arrington

Dr. Becky Anthony (@becky_anthony) is an assistant professor in the Department of Social Work at Salisbury University and Ms. Bobbi Arrington (@bobbielle) is an instructor at School of Social Work at Monmouth University.   In this blog post, they write about how they developed and managed an assignment using Twitter in their Human Behavior and the Social Environment Courses.  In another post,  Ms. Arrington interviews Ms. Nadia Jeter, a BSW student who completed the assignment.

As professional users of Twitter, we understand how social media can be utilized to share knowledge, resources, and information.  As professors, we wondered would students be able to gain similar professional benefits if they utilized social media, specifically Twitter, in the classroom.  To help us answer this question, we created the “Twitter Project” for our Human Behavior and the Social Environment (HBSE) students.

Based on the course design where the content of each week is about a specific diverse community, we assigned students into groups and gave each group a specific diverse community. These communities included: religious communities, people with disabilities, social classism in the United States, African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, and LGBTQ populations. Each student was asked to post, using our classroom hashtag, two tweets per week about their assigned community. They were encouraged to post about news, current events, and advocacy opportunities, focusing on examples of social and economic injustice. Learners were graded based on writing two posts (or tweets) per week.  The assignment was worth eight points.  A student received a point each week they posted two tweets that advocated on behalf of an issue that affected their particular population.

Follow-up to 10/28 #MacroSW Twitter Chat

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Nov 7, 2014

How do you get social work students passionate about policy issues?  Jimmy Young and I have an answer for you – live Twitter chats!  We were overwhelmed with the response from social work educators and students to our live Twitter Chat last Tuesday, October 28th.  My best estimate is that close to 200 people, mostly students from at least six universities across the country, participated in our one-hour chat about income inequality.  You can read a copy of the transcript from the chat here.  What I observed during the chat was that students were engaged in open, thoughtful and respectful conversations about the problems in our country due to the wide income gap between the rich and poor.
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The chat was hosted by the #MacroSW Chat folks who graciously allowed Jimmy and I to co-moderate a discussion about the film Inequality for All.   When organizing this event, we targeted to social work students in social welfare policy and macro practice classes. Click here  to read about how we set up the chat and developed an assignment using Twitter.

Many thanks to #MacroSW Chat, especially Pat Shelly (@PatShellySSW) of the University of Buffalo School of Social Work and Karen Zgoda (@karenzgoda), Instructor at Bridgewater State University, who sponsored and promoted our chat.  And a big thanks to everyone who participated in the chat – including social work students and educators from Appalachia State, Bridgewater State University, California State University – Long Beach, Tarleton State University, University of Alabama at Birmingham, University of Buffalo School of Social Work, and the University of Nebraska Kearney.

How to cite this post:

Hitchcock, L. I. (2014, November 7). Follow-up to 10/28 #MacroSW Twitter Chat[Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2014/11/07/follow-up-to-1028-macrosw-twitter-chat/.