Teaching Social Work with Digital Technology Book Group

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Sep 23, 2019

If you teach social work with technology, either online or in a traditional classroom, we (Melanie, Nancy and Laurel) invite you to learn with and from peers in this free book group – Teaching Social Work with Digital Technology.  Goals of this virtual book group are to: 1) create a supportive learning community; and 2) provide space for reflection about one’s own professional development with teaching with technology.

This group will run from January to June 2020, with monthly meetings and a moderated online private Facebook group. The group will include live virtual meetings, with discussion moderated by an author and a guest educator.  In between meetings, social work educators will lead and moderate book discussions, and offer reflective questions and simple learning tasks. Participants should have access to the book by January 2020. The schedule follows:

Three Ways to Model Good Boundaries with Technology in Social Work Ed

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Sep 3, 2019

The National Association of Social Workers’ (NASW) Standards for Technology in Social Work Practice (2017) offer a number of standards for social work educators and practitioners.  One of these standards focuses on maintaining boundaries with our students.  This is not a new ethical practice for social work educators; we have always worked to maintain boundaries with our students.  Rather, the challenge has been navigating these boundaries in virtual spaces as technology has changed when and how we can communicate and engage with each other. 

Not surprisingly, the tech standard from NASW focuses on the social work educator taking precautions.   Managing risk is a good idea, and I would suggest that we also embrace the affordances that digital and social technologies can offer our students, our classrooms and our own professional development.  The big question for most of us is how to do this in ways that are comfortable, manageable, and ethical.  Over the past few years, many social work educators have contributed their knowledge and expertise to this blog about how they engage students around technology in their classrooms.  In this post, I have pulled together some of their suggestions for how you can model good boundaries with technology in your teaching practice.

Tips for New Online Social Work Educators

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Aug 21, 2019

Editor’s Note: Melissa Thompson, MSW is a lecturer at Dominican University in Chicago, IL, and tweets at @mmt98.  Nathalie P. Jones, PhD, MSW is an Associate Professor of Social Work at Tarleton State University and tweets at @Dr.NJones.  In this blog post, they share their best tips for social work educator who are new to online teaching.

According to the National Association of Social Workers’ (NASW) Technology Standards for Social Work Practice (2017), social workers are urged to use technology in an ethical manner for practice and learning environments. In higher education, we hear about “digital native” students, who have grown up with a life centered on technology and who present as digital super humans. However, research is increasingly showing this concept to be a myth, and that designed learning environments focused on this myth can lead to poor learning outcomes (Kirschner & De Bruyckere, 2017). Another myth we often see among social work educators is the perception that non-traditional students are resistant to the use of technology in the classroom.  Recent data from the Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE) National Workforce Data Brief (2018) shows this to be a myth as well, reporting that when it comes to online education in social work, the highest enrollment rates were non-traditional students.

Digital Advocacy in the Social Work Classroom: Students speaking out online

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Aug 7, 2019

Editor’s Note:  Julia Kleinschmit is a clinical associate professor in the School of Social Work at The University of Iowa, and Breanne Benson is a currently MSW student in the School of Social Work at The University of Iowa.  In this blog post, Julia writes about an assignment that uses social media to promote advocacy skills and professionalism among social work students.  Breanne offers her experience with the assignment as a student and reflects on how she grew her skills as a future social worker.  Julia can be found on LinkedIn, and Breanne is on Instagram at _bmbenson.

Addressing Technology in Changing Social Work Environment

The Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE) Competency 1: Demonstrate Ethical and Professional Behavior requires social workers to use technology ethically and appropriately to facilitate practice outcomes. Many have focused on the need for confidentiality in electronic communication and social media boundary management. These are important issues, but at the University of Iowa’s School of Social Work, Megan Gilster, Stephen Cummings, and I believed we could also teach MSW students to use their online identities and social media as powerful tools for effective advocacy.

360-degree immersive video apps: Why you should create meaningful research-based digital resources to engage learners

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Jul 31, 2019

Editor’s Note: Dr. Tarsem Singh Cooner is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Work and Social Care at the University of Birmingham. In this post, he describes why and how he developed 360-degree immersive video apps to create engaging learning opportunities for students.  Additionally, his work shows how digital tools can be used to creatively disseminate research findings to practitioners.  Dr. Cooner tweets at @Akali65.  You can also email him at t.s.cooner@bham.ac.uk.

The background

Quite recently I was lucky enough to be part of a fantastic research project exploring factors that can either enable or create barriers to effective child protection social work. Our project had collected a lot of data that we were convinced could have a really positive impact on child protection services. To disseminate our research in a more accessible, meaningful, situated and impactful way, I led an initiative within the team to create a set of 360-degree immersive video apps that social work students and practitioners can download onto their smartphones via the iTunes and Google Play Stores. Using their phones with easily accessible 360-degree headsets (like Google’s Cardboard) they can become ‘immersed’ in our work through recreated scenes from our research experiences.

Your Devices are Welcome!: How to Handle Technology in the Social Work Classroom

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Jun 26, 2019

Editor’s Note: Dr. Stephanie Hamm is an associate professor of social work in the School of Social Work at Abilene Christian University in Texas.  In this blog post, she shares how mobile devices and other forms of technology are incorporated into her social work class sessions. You can follow her on Twitter at @drHammsj.

Many years ago, when I was a social work student, I learned effective ways of working with people, what to do, and how to take care of myself. Back then, we did not rely on the Internet, rather, we relied on books and articles, and the expertise of our teachers, field instructors, and practitioners in the field. We often relied on the policies of the organization. Today, in my classroom, students can check names and dates, statistics and new interventions in no time at all, using their phone. I once had a student fact-check everything I said in class! Students know when an instructor is bluffing and faking, so why not tap into their curiosity and easy access for the purpose of creating a classroom in which students are not just consumers of course content, but co-creators. I tell my students that they are responsible for their knowledge as well as their classmates’ knowledge.

I use and encourage technology and devices in my classes to find information that is quickly changing. For example, my content for a class session can discuss social theory on the changing American demographics, and students can quickly find actual numbers that define and operationalize that changing demographic.