#APM18 Teaching with Technology using the SAMR Model
On Thursday, November 8, 2018, I will be presenting with Jonathan Singer, Melanie Sage & Nancy J. Smyth the Teaching Institute for Early Career Faculty at the Council on Social Work Education’s 2018 Annual Program Meeting. In this session, we are focusing on how faculty can incorporate technology into a social work course. All educators, especially those early in their careers, find themselves teaching from syllabi they had no role in developing. Although there are many benefits to the “hand-me-down” syllabus, one of the limitations is that assignments are rarely updated to reflect the realities of the 21st century workplace, which now includes the use of technology to achieve practice outcomes for clients and organizations. The purpose of this workshop is to learn about how to incorporate the use technology into a social work assignment on your syllabus, using Puentedura’s SAMR Module for Technology Integration. We will provide a brief overview of teaching with technology before focusing on how to infuse technology into an assignment from your syllabus, including learning objectives and associated assessment techniques in your syllabus. Participants will learn to identify ways to substitute, augment, modify or redefine existing learning strategies and assignments with technology-mediated learning strategies and assignments. By the end of the session, the participant will have an assignment that uses technology to meet the learning needs identified in the syllabus.
#APM18 Helping Social Work Students develop a Professional Online Presence for Interprofessional Communication
Laurel, Allison & Mary Jacque
On Thursday, November 8, 2018, I will be presenting with Allison Curington and Mary Jacque Carroll, both field directors extraordinaire, at the Field Education Institute at the Council on Social Work Education’s 2018 Annual Program Meeting. As part of the institute, we are facilitating a one hour on how field educators can help social work students develop a professional online presence for interprofessional communication. We will be sharing information and tools that field directors can use to guide curricular development of learning approaches and assessment strategies to achieve practice outcomes around interprofessional communication with digital and social technologies. One of the tools we will be sharing is the second edition of Social Media Toolkit for Social Work Field Educators, which has been revised with content based on the 2018 NASW Code of Ethics.
You can access your free copy of the toolkit here: https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2018/11/05/revised-social-media-toolkit/
Second Edition of the Social Media Toolkit for Social Work Field Educators
We are pleased to announce the availability of the second edition of Social Media Toolkit for Social Work Field Educators (2018), which has been updated to address the recent changes to the Code of Ethics from the National Association of Social Workers.
This toolkit provides social work field educators with tools and resources to help social work students and field instructors assess, develop, and maintain an online identity for professional purposes. There are two parts to the toolkit – an Educator’s Guide and a PowerPoint Slide Deck. The Educator’s Guide provides directions, descriptions, and handouts related to the content of the toolkit while the Slide Deck includes pre-formatted slides with selected content for presenting in the classroom or a workshop. The content of this toolkit is divided into six different topics centered on how to use social media professionally as a social worker:
1. Ethical Considerations for Social Media Use in Social Work Practice
2. Reflecting on Social Media Use in Social Work Practice
3. Engaging and Self-Assessment with Social Media
4. Professional Practice with Social Media
5. Case Studies for Students & Field Educators
6. Social Media Learning Activities for Field Education
Specific content for these topic areas include learning activities about why, when, and how to use social media as a practicing social work professional; skills for managing an online identity; guidelines for developing one’s own professional social media policy; and case studies to help develop professional and ethical competency.
Teaching in the open: How I published a free textbook
Matthew DeCarlo
Editor’s Note: Matthew DeCarlo is an assistant professor of social work in the School of Social Work at Radford University. In this blog post, he describes the concept of open teaching and how he adapted a research methods textbook for social work education.
What does it mean to teach in the open?
When I tell people I like to teach “in the open,” their first response is often “I already do that!” In way, they are right. To be an instructor is to be open and vulnerable by proclaiming yourself an expert (or at least a useful guide) and engaging students in the learning process. Students see through your eyes as you help them understand the social work knowledge base, and you are often faced with the limitations of your own knowledge.
In a different way, when I talk about teaching “in the open,” what I really mean is, “I want to share my educational resources with other educators and build on the resources that others have shared.” As a junior faculty member, I am constantly trying to figure out how best to teach new course content and improve my instruction. Faculty at both universities at which I have had the pleasure of teaching were open with me. Before beginning a new course preparation, at least two professors would happily meet with me so they can discuss their syllabi, review tips and tricks, and most importantly, share their materials. The message I received was, “take all of these materials, use whatever you want, don’t worry about giving me credit, and let me know if you have any questions.” Without these resources, junior faculty and adjuncts would be stuck reinventing the wheel—for instance, coming up with yet another prompt for an article presentation or slideshow on random sampling.
Social Work and the Open Education Movement
Matthew DeCarlo
Editor’s Note: Matthew DeCarlo is an assistant professor of social work in the School of Social Work at Radford University. In this blog post, he describes the open educational resources (OER) movement and how social work educators can get involved.
Why should social work care about open educational resources?
The rising cost of textbooks is an issue of social justice for social work education. The average undergraduate student in the United States, according to The College Board (2017), spends $1250 on textbooks each academic year. Two years ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2016) reported the cost of textbooks increased at a faster rate (87.5%) than tuition (62.7%), housing (50.5%), and all other student costs. Students report that textbook costs are more financially stressful than meals and food, healthcare, and housing—with 43% skipping meals and 70% getting a job to pay for textbooks (Cengage, 2018).
Although dollar-for-dollar, textbooks are less of a financial burden to students than other costs, the high cost of textbooks negatively impacts student academic performance and retention. A survey of all students at Florida higher education institutions found that due to high textbook prices, 67% of students do not purchase the required textbook, 38% of students receive poor grades because they could not afford the textbook, 20% fail a course because they could not afford the textbook, 48% take fewer courses, 46% avoid registering for a class, 48% drop a class, and 26% withdraw from a course (Florida Virtual Campus, 2016).
One solution, as proposed by traditional textbook publishers, is for students to pay for subscriptions that turn textbooks from a good into a service, like Netflix or Spotify. In this model, students rent access to digital editions of textbooks which can be viewed in the publisher’s platform. Given the high price of textbooks, publishers point to the idea that students are okay with this bargain—lower prices for rented digital books viewable in a publisher’s proprietary app.
Professors, on the other hand, should be suspicious of subscription platforms and their implications for academic freedom. Unlike Spotify, which catalogs music from nearly every music publisher worldwide, subscription platforms will be balkanized. For example, only Cengage books will be offered in Cengage Unlimited. In that case, if an educator prefers a book published by Pearson or McGraw Hill to teach a course, they may find it difficult or impossible to adopt it if their department, institution, or students already subscribe to a different service.
Another solution to skyrocketing textbook costs proposed by publishers is “inclusive access.” Billed as a solution for both professors and students, “inclusive access” allows students to rent access to a less expensive virtual edition of the textbook through a publisher’s proprietary platform. Professors can still choose which book to use, and indeed, publishers will build in customized interactive elements, homework assignments, and other services. If a professor chooses an “inclusive access” text, students face a complicated opt-out process if they prefer a paper textbook and the proprietary applications required to view the material are often inaccessible on mobile devices and for those with disabilities. Additionally, inclusive access rentals often end at the close of the semester, cutting off student access to knowledge and eliminating the used textbook market completely.
Both subscription-based and inclusive access solutions drive home the point that social work knowledge is currently owned by textbook publishers, not the community of social work scholars. In the publishers’ preferred future, that knowledge will not be owned by students and faculty, only rented for a limited time.
Solutions to the broken textbook market
Students engage in a number of clever stopgap solutions to minimize the costs of the broken textbook market. Cost-cutting measures include such innocuous things as sharing a book with a classmate, purchasing a used book, purchasing a previous edition, or buying from an online retailer. Many students will delay the purchase of a book until they know it is absolutely necessary in the course, use the free sample pages on Google or Amazon previews or simply never purchase it at all. Other students will pirate textbooks using Library Genesis or simply by taking pictures of a classmate’s book. Faculty often support these initiatives by allowing old editions of textbooks for a course, negotiating with publishers for lower textbook costs, or simply turning a blind eye to piracy.
Student Placement Software for the Social Work Field Office: Goodbye Post-it Notes!
Kristen Samuels
This month’s guest educator post comes from Kristen Samuels, MSW, MS, MEd, the Field Director for the University of Phoenix’s Department of Social Work. In this blog post, she reviews the “whys” and “hows” of selecting student placement software for your field education office. Kristen can be reached at Kristen.samuels@gmail.com, or @KristenMSamuels on Twitter.
Student placement software are valuable tools when managing the complex processes of Social Work Field Placement. These programs are often web-based and provide easy access for our students, field instructors, and administrators to gather and store information, submit documentation, and obtain reportable data. In reality, field offices often piece together multiple systems to meet all the office needs. This is often because of cost and program features – few affordable student placement programs address all of the needs for a typical field office. In the end, the most important components of student placement software and databases are functional communication between stakeholders, compliance with regulatory requirements, and ease of use.
Endless platform options are available to manage the student placement process. Depending on the size of your program, your needs will vary, and depending on your budget, your options for platforms will vary. Some institutions are able to manage placements through home-grown efforts (i.e. they design their software in-house) or low-cost proprietary software, such as Google Drive applications, which not only encourage collaboration among the team but are also free to use. A spectrum of other proprietary platforms are available, with varying functionality and associated costs. On the low-cost end of the spectrum, software programs such as Intern Placement Tracking (IPT) allow for form submission (i.e. students and field supervisors complete learning agreements and evaluation forms online) to manage basic logistics, whereas larger programs like 2U provide a placement team with tools to manage a database of affiliated agencies, accreditation support, and more.
How to pick the program that is right for your Field Office?
It is important to develop your own list of needs based on your specific institution and the needs of your field office. Here are some questions to consider when developing that list:
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
