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.

#SWTech – An Introduction and History of the Online Group

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Aug 15, 2019

Editor’s Note: This blog post was written by the following users of the #SWTech Community – Melanie Sage, Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University at Buffalo; Laurel Iverson Hitchcock, Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Alabama at Birmingham:  Jonathan B. Singer, Associate Professor of Social Work at Loyola University and founder of the Social Work Podcast; and Nancy J. Smyth, Professor & Dean at the School of Social Work at the University at Buffalo.  

This is an introduction to #SWTech, an online network of social workers interested and engaged with technology for social good. Our goal  is to help individuals new to #SWTech learn about the norms, history, and general merrymaking within the community. This statement can also service as a resource to send people who are interested in learning more about #SWTech.

Description

#SWTech is a hashtag used by people and groups interested in the intersection of social work and technology.  People use #swtech primarily on Twitter, but the hashtag is occasionally used on other social media platforms such as Facebook or Instagram. This hashtag is used in tweets and other posts on social media to share about such topics as:

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.