Review of #BPDTX16

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Apr 9, 2016

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

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Apr 2, 2016

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

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Mar 31, 2016

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:

Pinterest Rubric

Pinterest Meta Rubric

Social Media and Technology Basics for the Social Work Educator – #BPDTX16

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Mar 30, 2016

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.

#APM2015 Using Documentaries and Twitter to Meet Macro/Policy Objectives in Social Work Education

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Oct 17, 2015

Today, Dr. Jimmy Young and I are presenting at the 61st Annual Program Meeting of the Council on Social Work Education about our social media assignment using a documentary movie and Twitter. There is a growing awareness that social media can be a valuable tool in social work education to help students develop and practice social work competencies. This presentation will inform participants about the development, implementation and evaluation of a social welfare macro/policy assignment for social work students using social media. In our session, we will The learning objectives for this session include:

1. Understand how the social media platform Twitter can be incorporated into assignments for social work policy and macro courses.

2. Demonstrate how social work educators can assess attainment of competency among social work 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 evaluation of social media-based assignments.

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

Implementing Service Learning Labs across a Social Work Curriculum

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Sep 29, 2015

Today, D. Scott Batey and I are presenting at the 16th Annual Conference of the Engagement Scholarship Consortium at Penn State about our work with service learning labs in the social work curriculum at UAB.  In this workshop, we will describe how we developed and implemented the service learning labs to date, discussing lessons learned from our planning process.  We hope to provide a model that participants can apply to their own institutions, and will share the next steps for our project, including implementation and assessment of the service labs.  Additionally, there will be time for participants to brainstorm with the presenters and each other. The learning objectives for this session include:

1. Understand strategies to plan & engage multiple partners in developing a community-based service learning project to support student & community outcomes.

2. Demonstrate how educators can duplicate the planning process for curriculum-based service learning projects at their 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 for the workshop PPT Slides for ESC Presentation.

Finally, here is the abstract for our presentation, titled Implementing Service Learning Labs Across a Social Work Curriculum:

Service learning has become an important component of higher education.  In addition to building community investment among a new generation of emerging adults, service learning increases community capacity to meet the many and varied local challenges.  These activities are closely aligned with the professional values of social work and social work education, and graduates of one undergraduate social work program have consistently voiced a desire for more practice opportunities.  To respond to these issues, we began a strategic planning process for integrating service learning into the professional curriculum.