Two Ways to Decolonize a Social Work Research Course
Editor’s Note: Dr. Amy Werman, DSW, LCSW, is a Lecturer in Discipline at the Columbia School of Social Work, with over 20 years of teaching experience in social work education. In this blog post, she shares two practical suggestions for social work research courses, focusing on ways to decolonize traditional content and integrate an anti-racist/anti-oppressive approach to teaching about research methodology.
For the past 20 years, I have been educating MSW students. The first course I ever taught was Research Methods, an “interesting” initiation into the field of teaching considering that most students would never choose to take this first-year course were it not required. How do I know this? It is a question on a survey that I give my research students at the beginning of every semester. And, consistently, 50% of students say that, given a choice, they would not take the course.
It’s understandable. If we’re being completely honest, social workers are in the business of “doing,” whether that’s providing concrete services, administering programs, writing policy, or ameliorating a host of micro-level to macro-level problems on the local and global level. Students struggle to comprehend how studying research relates to their endgame of “doing.” Moreover, many students report having a fear of research, viewing it as something to get through. Incoming students offer words like “boring,” “overwhelming,” “statistics,” and “intimidating” when I ask them to free-associate to the term “research.”
The unprecedented shift into teleworking; a personal story about working remotely in social work education
Editor’s Note: Agata Dera, MSW, is an Associate and LiveSupport Specialist with the Columbia School of Social Work’s (CSW) Online Campus, where she works with social work faculty and students in online courses to optimize the digital learning environment. In this post, she discussed how she transitioned from an office space to remote working. As many of us are working at home because of the COVID19 pandemic, Agata offers practical suggestions and encouragement to this new way of working for many social work professionals. You can connect with Agata on Twitter at @agataddera.
Over the past few weeks of this year, as the world stands together in the face of a pandemic, I have witnessed so many of my colleagues experience an unprecedented shift to working from home. As according to Forbes (Eisenberg, 2020), it is likely that more than half of our workforce is now working remotely, I cannot help but to reminisce of my transition into a virtual workforce. I hope that by sharing my story with you, you will have the insight I wish I once had to enhance your productivity and overall success.
For the past several years, I have been solely working from home due to severe health issues. Working remotely provided me with the flexibility I needed to be able to recover from several major spinal cord surgeries while also continuing my professional career. I truly believe that for me, being able to work from home is a blessing as my career is such a big part of my identity.
Fostering a spirit of collaboration with Social Work Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Editor’s note: When COVID19 cases started rising in the US in March 2020, institutions of higher education made significant decisions that required instructors and students to pivot the delivery and design of courses almost overnight. In this blog post, an instructional team from Columbia University’s School of Social Work (CSSW) detail how they approached changes to their course using trauma-informed teaching strategies. The team consists of Matthea Marquart, Director of CSSW’s Online MSW Program, Katherine Seibel, Legislative and Policy Analyst at a nonprofit promoting young people’s wellbeing, and Nicole Wong, Director of Support, Advocacy, & Violence Prevention at Vassar College. For more information related to this post, please reach out to Matthea at @MattheaMarquart.
Our spring semester online course, which is part of Columbia University School of Social Work’s (CSSW) Master’s of Science in Social Work program, began in March 2020, with our first class session on March 10. The next day, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, and the next week was spring break. Columbia University, which is located in New York City, had already been taking steps to protect student safety, such as moving residential courses online, but our course was already online, with our students located across the United States.
As a result, the policy impact that most affected our course came with the University’s announcement on March 20 that all spring semester courses would be graded pass/fail. This policy impact freed us to make significant changes to our course assignments and grading policies mid-semester, in collaboration with each other as the instructional team, as well as with the students. We also implemented trauma-informed teaching strategies in response to the changing circumstances in the world, which had a significant impact on students and which we recognized could contribute to increased experiences of trauma. Trauma-informed teaching recognizes that past and ongoing trauma can impact current student success, and employs strategies to foster a supportive environment and reduce barriers to learning. An example is sharing power with students through collaboration and choice about course decisions.
The Power of Lighting in a Virtual Classroom: Tips on Improving Webcam Lighting for Online Educators
Editor’s Note: Agata Dera, MSW, is an Associate and Live Support Specialist with the Columbia School of Social Work’s (CSSW) Online Campus, where she works with social work faculty and students in online courses to optimize the digital learning environment. In this post, she provides insight on how online educators can put their best foot forward during live sessions through lighting. I first met Agata when I participated in CSSW’s Institute on Pedagogy and Technology for Online Courses last summer. You can read more about my experiences with the Institute in this post. In full disclosure, Agata did review and assess my ability to use lighting in a virtual classroom. All I can say is that I passed.
My primary responsibility is to provide technical support to the Columbia School of Social Work’s (CSSW) online community. My goal is to ensure that technology is considered as a tool rather than a barrier in online education. Also, as an alumni of this program, I am so proud to be a part of a virtual campus that is so committed to the quality of online learning by utilizing technological advancements.
One of the ways in which we ensure that our program is at the highest quality is by educating our community about the importance of great lighting when presenting on a webcam. Good lighting is one of the core elements of a successful on-camera performance for any online educator. It is part of our ongoing effort to create engaging, enlightening and innovative online courses in the most effective way possible.
Reflections from the Summer 2019 Institute on Pedagogy and Technology for Online Courses
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:
Teaching & Learning in Social Work by Laurel Iverson Hitchcock is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
