Reflections from the Summer 2019 Institute on Pedagogy and Technology for Online Courses

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Nov 19, 2019

Growing up, I loved summertime! I have some fond memories of traveling, riding my bike, swimming, and general goofing off.  Now, this past summer I worked….okay, there was a little swimming and a lot of traveling, and I took an online course. Not just any course; I am a proud graduate of the Columbia School of Social Work’s Institute on Pedagogy and Technology for Online Courses.  In what has to be the most tardy “what I did over the summer” essay ever, I want to share why I took this course and more importantly, my key takeaways from this experience. 

The Institute has been around since 2017 and consists of five weeks of modules with a two-hour live session and homework each week. While it is geared toward training instructors for Columbia’s Online Social Work Program, anyone can apply for the Institute, and completing the training doesn’t obligate one to teach for Columbia’s Online Social Work Program.  The Institute models what a typical online course is like at Columbia, and incorporates many best practices for how to teach an online course.  In fact, the Institute has won awards from the International E-Learning Association and United States Distance Learning Association.  To learn more about the Institute I recommend the following articles:

#APM19 – Building Capacity for International Field Placements: A Program Development Checklist

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Oct 24, 2019

Are you attending the Council on Social Work Education’s Annual Program Meeting in Denver this week?  Want to know more about how to do an international social work field placement? Do you need a session to attend on Friday, October 25th at 7:30 AM?  Well, then we have a session for you.  Please consider attending the panel discussion about the ongoing development for our international field placement checklist; which I am doing with my good colleagues from the Department of Social Work at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Colleen Fisher, Mary Jacque Carroll, Stacy Moak and I will talk about how the key benefits, challenges, and social justice considerations of developing new international field placement, and review our checklist which is in the early stages of development.  Overall, our goals is to share our capacity building strategies for international placements through a practical checklist designed for social work.

For those of you who cannot make the presentation, we are including some details in this blog post. First, here are some screen shots of our checklist:

#APM19 – Evolving the Signature Pedagogy with the Social Media Toolkit for Field Educators

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Oct 22, 2019

On October 27, 2019 at 8:45 AM, during the Annual Program Meeting for the Council on Social Work Education in Denver CO, Mary Jacque Carroll, Allison M. Curington, Robyn V. Snider and I will be presenting on information and tools that field directors can use to guide curricular development and assessment strategies around interprofessional communication with digital and social technologies. If you are still in Denver, please come find us in Governor’s Square 11 – Plaza Building of the conference hotel. We’ll also be sharing how you can develop your own professional social media policies to support communication with students and field agencies as well as how to create activities for students in field to increase understanding of the ethical use of social and digital media in social work practice.

You’ll also learn how to access the Social Media Toolkit for Field Educators, a free resource with educator’s guide and a PowerPoint slide deck.

#APM19 – Changing Teaching Practices for Technology: Using the SAMR Model for Technology Integration

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Oct 22, 2019

On October 27, 2019 at 10:00 AM, during the Annual Program Meeting for the Council on Social Work Education in Denver CO, Melanie Sage and I will be sharing some insights from Chapter 4 of our book, Teaching Social Work with Digital Technology, co-written with Nancy Smyth.  If you are still in Denver, please come find us in the Majestic Ballroom –Tower Building of the conference hotel.  We will be sharing how Puentedura’s SAMR Model for Technology Integration can be used to incorporate technology into traditional social justice assignments in social work education.  There will also be time to adopt one of your current assignments using the SMAR Model.

Additionally, we’ll be talking about our virtual book group that will be launch in January 2020.  You can read more about it here:

For those of you who cannot make the presentation, we are including the details in this blog post.

• Teaching Social Work with Digital Technology Book Group