Navigating AI in Social Work Education
Editor’s note: In this blog post, four social worker educators share a sample from their new and free resource about using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in social work education. Alexander Rubin, LCSW, is a clinical assistant professor based in field education at the University at Buffalo School of School of Social Work. He specializes in community partnership development, field-specific teaching, and innovation in field education. Michael Lynch, LMSW, is a clinical associate professor at the University at Buffalo School of Social Work. He specializes in experiential learning, community partnerships, and the use of technology in social work practice and education. Todd Sage, Ph.D., MSW, is a clinical associate professor at the University at Buffalo School of Social Work. He is the chemical dependency track coordinator and mental health track chair. He researches technology and child welfare and enjoys integrating emerging technologies in the classroom and as a field instructor. Melanie Sage, Ph.D., LCSW, is a tech consultant for universities, social work departments, and social work agencies. She is an expert in generative AI, machine learning in social work, social media use, online education, and teaching with technology. She also works with agencies to train staff in Motivational Interviewing.
As social work educators, we find ourselves at a point where the capabilities of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT intersect with our professional practice more and more often, and we ponder these challenges with much philosophical debate in academic settings. But we send our students out to their practicum sites, and the debates are no longer philosophical; real-life decisions affect agencies, students, and clients, and these challenges must be thoughtfully and practically addressed. The emergence of AI has outpaced the development of comprehensive policy in numerous professional settings. This is why we wrote an article to offer guidance and considerations for the social work field educator with a student placed in their agency. Our goal is to introduce use cases, debates, and potential policies. The full article can be downloaded here and shared with your local social services agencies.
The Role of the Interpretation Guide in the Self-Study: CSWE Accreditation
Editor’s note: Melissa Freedman, MSW, is a social work educator and consultant specializing in leadership, supervision, administration, and quality management and assurance. In this blog post, she shares an overview of the interpretation guide to write a self-study for social work accreditation by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). I found using CSWE’s interpretation guide both useful and overwhelming at the same time, and the tips that Melissa shares in this post helped break down the guide for me. She can be reached via email at freedman121@comcast.net.
As a social work program navigating the accreditation process, this blog post assumes you have created a work plan, identified your core accreditation team members and their roles, assigned writing responsibilities to these team members and/or other key individuals, and started to develop an internal timeline for task completion. If you are still contemplating how to start the self-study process or have not yet addressed all key planning steps, you may read the Five Steps to Planning your Social Work Program’s Self-Study: CSWE Accreditation the first blog post in this series on CSWE Accreditation.
Before social work programs begin writing their self-study(ies), I vehemently encourage them to follow a few recommendations. First, to actively use the interpretation guide. Second, TO ACTIVELY USE THE INTERPRETATION GUIDE!
What is the interpretation guide? CSWE identifies it as the “official companion document” to Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS). Currently, there are two versions of the guide available: one for social work programs seeking accreditation under the 2015 EPAS and another for programs seeking accreditation under the 2022 EPAS. Here are the links to the most recent version of each guide:
Five Steps to Planning your Social Work Program’s Self-Study: CSWE Accreditation
Editor’s note: Melissa Freedman, MSW, is a social work educator and consultant specializing in leadership, supervision, administration, and quality management and assurance. In this blog post, she shares guidance for social work educators about how to start planning for the important task of reaffirmation and the initial process of accreditation with the Council on Social Work Education. I can also envision social work faculty and staff applying these guidelines to the adoption of new accreditation standards and policies and sharing them with institutional leadership when asking for support and resources. She can be reached via email at freedman121@comcast.net.
The time has come to begin writing your accreditation self-study with the Council of Social Work Education (CSWE). As with any major project, preparation and planning are key. Simple, right? And then it’s time to put the metaphorical pen to paper, and the landslide of anxiety and overwhelming doubt begins. To help alleviate some of the agony, this blog serves to provide introductory guidance to identify your accreditation team and the initial tasks necessary to develop the most appropriate plan of action for your program(s). This guidance stems from my years of a career spent in leadership, training, and quality management and assurance. I will start with this…it truly takes a village, and writing a self-study should never be a siloed process.
How Becoming an Adjunct Improved My Social Work Practice
Editor’s Note: Christa McCrorie (she/her), LICSW-PIP, is an adjunct instructor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a social worker with a private practice, Creative Therapeutic Solutions, LLC, where she specializes in queer needs and trauma processing. In this blog post, she shares how her time as an adjunct instructor has improved her own social work practice and offers reflection prompts for those interested in adjunct teaching as a social worker. You can reach her through her practice at https://creativetherapeutic.solutions/
As someone with almost ten years of experience as a social worker, I had already branched into independent roles; I was leading my own private practice, was providing supervision to master’s level social workers, and was frequently asked to consult for publications in niche mental health topics such as stress management for teens, and queer education. I enjoyed all of it, but one of my personal goals has been to shift into a teaching role, and contributing as an adjunct professor for the local university’s social work educational program seemed like a great fit. After seeking this position for several years, I finally found an opportunity in 2022 and was signed up for my first class!
The Power of Words: Using Poetic Analysis in a Social Work Research Course
Editor’s Note: This blog post was written by Amber Sutton, LICSW, ABD, a social work instructor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, in collaboration with students from her undergraduate social work research course during the Spring 2022 semester. The students are (in alphabetical order): Iva Burdette, Jackie Chavez-Martinez, Jennifer Dussich, Courtney Kramer-Williams, Katie Kramer, Hannah Marsh, Rachel Shunnarah, Natalie Trammell, Ahmia Vain, and Ella Wolfe. In this blog post, Amber and the students share how they used poetic analysis to answer some age-old questions – What does it mean to be a social worker, and what is research? You can also read their two poems.
When agreeing to teach SW 320 Research Methods to BSW students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), I knew I wanted to highlight alternative ways to conduct research that add an element of humanity to the data and encourage the students to use research to share power.
We started the class by reading Ann Hartman’s 1990 article, The Many Ways of Knowing. This article remains just as relevant today as it did then and has played a fundamental role in developing my relationship with research. Hartman’s editorial essay calls on social workers to recognize that each contribution adds to our knowledge and deepens our understanding. She boldly states, “there are many truths, and there are many ways of knowing” (p. 3). This article served as the foundation of the course because I wanted the students to understand that quantitative and qualitative methods are an integral part of social work research. Our profession misses out when we center on quantitative research as the only valid way of knowing.
During our very first class, I provided large post-it notes and markers. Then, allotting 20 minutes, I asked the students to answer these two questions in a way that felt most comfortable to them (words, drawings, etc.):
- What does being a professional social worker mean to you?
- How do you define research?
Two Ways to Decolonize a Social Work Research Course
Editor’s Note: Dr. Amy Werman, DSW, LCSW, is a Lecturer in Discipline at the Columbia School of Social Work, with over 20 years of teaching experience in social work education. In this blog post, she shares two practical suggestions for social work research courses, focusing on ways to decolonize traditional content and integrate an anti-racist/anti-oppressive approach to teaching about research methodology.
For the past 20 years, I have been educating MSW students. The first course I ever taught was Research Methods, an “interesting” initiation into the field of teaching considering that most students would never choose to take this first-year course were it not required. How do I know this? It is a question on a survey that I give my research students at the beginning of every semester. And, consistently, 50% of students say that, given a choice, they would not take the course.
It’s understandable. If we’re being completely honest, social workers are in the business of “doing,” whether that’s providing concrete services, administering programs, writing policy, or ameliorating a host of micro-level to macro-level problems on the local and global level. Students struggle to comprehend how studying research relates to their endgame of “doing.” Moreover, many students report having a fear of research, viewing it as something to get through. Incoming students offer words like “boring,” “overwhelming,” “statistics,” and “intimidating” when I ask them to free-associate to the term “research.”
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
