Talking Technology Competency in the Social Work Classroom

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Sep 9, 2016

Elise Johnson, LCSW is a clinical social worker at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center/Miller Children’s and Women’s Hospital of Long Beach. She has practiced social work in the L.A. area for over 20 years in the areas of health care, mental health, homelessness and child welfare.  She is also a part time lecturer. She is by no means an expert in technology but is always on the lookout for technological innovations that could help clients and students. In this blog post, she writes about how she incorporates technology into her MSW courses.

I’ve been in the field of social work for nearly twenty five years, and I’ve been a lecturer for two and a half at California State University, Dominguez Hills.  I teach two theory classes (Human Behavior I and II) in the MSW program.  Given my clinical background, my overarching message in HBSE (Human Behavior and the Social Environment) is that theory is viable and applicable to contemporary social work practice.  The incorporation of technology into my pedagogy is an important element of that framework.  Integral to my teaching approach is the view that technology is an asset, an assistive value; one that should be viewed through a strengths-based lens similar to  every other aspect of our profession. Initially, I decided to dedicate a week to the topic of technology in social work practice,  and over the last couple of years, I have updated long-standing assignments by embedding them technology-based elements. For example, first year MSW students are developing competencies conducting bio-psychosocial assessments in other courses,  In  HBSE I, I encourage them to expand this traditional assessment to include an assessment of their clients’ technology literacy, access, strengths and risk factors across the lifespan.   By integrating course content and assignments around technology in social work practice, students not only understand the role of  technology in social work, they also learn to apply and practice with the very technology they may use in the real-world.  

Twitter Project for HBSE Course

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Dec 12, 2014

Dr. Becky Anthony (@becky_anthony) is an assistant professor in the Department of Social Work at Salisbury University and Ms. Bobbi Arrington (@bobbielle) is an instructor at School of Social Work at Monmouth University.   In this blog post, they write about how they developed and managed an assignment using Twitter in their Human Behavior and the Social Environment Courses.  In another post,  Ms. Arrington interviews Ms. Nadia Jeter, a BSW student who completed the assignment.

As professional users of Twitter, we understand how social media can be utilized to share knowledge, resources, and information.  As professors, we wondered would students be able to gain similar professional benefits if they utilized social media, specifically Twitter, in the classroom.  To help us answer this question, we created the “Twitter Project” for our Human Behavior and the Social Environment (HBSE) students.

Based on the course design where the content of each week is about a specific diverse community, we assigned students into groups and gave each group a specific diverse community. These communities included: religious communities, people with disabilities, social classism in the United States, African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, and LGBTQ populations. Each student was asked to post, using our classroom hashtag, two tweets per week about their assigned community. They were encouraged to post about news, current events, and advocacy opportunities, focusing on examples of social and economic injustice. Learners were graded based on writing two posts (or tweets) per week.  The assignment was worth eight points.  A student received a point each week they posted two tweets that advocated on behalf of an issue that affected their particular population.

Using Storify in the Classroom: A Student’s Perspective from Natalie Savoy

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Mar 10, 2014

Back in January, Dr. Jamie Mitchell from Wayne State University wrote about an assignment for her Human Behavior in the Social Environment Theory class that incorporated Storify, a social media platform that allows users to curate a digital narrative about any topic.  The assignment required students to articulate how a theory of their choosing could be applied to a real-world, under-served population or problem of interest using Storify.  As a follow-up to Dr. Mitchell’s post, I asked one her MSW students, Natalie Savoy, to share her thoughts on the assignment, what it was like to use social media in the classroom and how social media might be incorporated in her future role as a social worker.  Here are Natalie’s responses to my questions:

What was your initial reaction to using social media for an assignment in your Human Behavior in the Social Environment Theory course?

Using Storify to Explore Theory in the MSW Classroom by Dr. Jamie Mitchell

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Jan 5, 2014

Dr. Jamie Mitchell is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Wayne State University.  In this blog post, Dr. Mitchell writes about how she incorporated Storify into a theory-based assignment for an MSW class last semester.  

When I realized this past summer that a standardized core assignment in my regular Human Behavior in the Social Environment course had been changed in a way that limited the ability of students to explore a theory of their choosing during the semester, I began testing educational technology tools as a means of restoring that opportunity in a fresh way. I know from experience that some MSW students may view social and developmental theory as abstract and somewhat dated; and I work incredibly hard to highlight the relevance of having a strong theoretical foundation to praxis. It’s important to me that students connect with and write about at least one theory that engages them personally, leading me to develop this new assignment centered on Storify.  Storify is a website that allows one to curate a digital narrative on any topic using an integrated social media search engine to locate sources such as tweets, blog posts, YouTube videos, and Google images. That “story” can then be published publicly and shared on other social media platforms.

My goal in developing this assignment was to give students an opportunity to articulate how a theory of their choosing could be applied to a real-world underserved population or problem of interest. Before the course began, I developed my own test Storify that could serve as an example to students and used it to develop a detailed rubric.

From the first day of class I introduced the new assignment and fielded questions from anxious students who were not comfortable with social media. To provide support for adopting Storify, I created a folder on my course website with existing tutorial videos and fact sheets on using Storify, and I developed my own resource for students on how to integrate a variety of content using bookmarklets to capture content around the web to import into Storify. I also worked through any glitches with students as they experimented with the platform and reserved a few minutes at the end of each class to demonstrate Storify functionality throughout the semester.

I was beyond impressed with how invested students were in creating high-quality digital narratives. The majority of students included more sources than were required, and went further in contextualizing how each source contributed to an understanding of the theory’s application to the issue or population than was required by the assignment rubric. Students also chose topics that were deeply personal to them and incredibly germane to the field of social work; covering topics such as human trafficking, school bullying, rape culture, racial profiling, immigrant experiences, inner city poverty, and LGBTQ empowerment. I used my own twitter account to share student projects, even tweeting prominent authors like Dr. Brené Brown when students utilized the Shame Resilience Theory she pioneered. I consider this initial foray into employing Storify as a course assignment to be a resounding success!

I would advise instructors who are interested in developing an assignment with Storify to familiarize themselves with the variety of existing resources such as free tutorial videos (Storify Guided Tour and Getting Started) and tip sheets, to experiment with the service themselves, and to explore the wealth of existing Storify stories for inspiration. Storify is free, intuitive, and user-friendly but it can be optimized by using additional strategies. For example, Google Chrome offers a bookmarklet or browser extension for Storify that allows users to bookmark content around the web and store it in a collection within Storify for later use. The website Topsy allows one to search for tweets by key words and hashtags as far back as two years, well beyond the six months that Twitter archives. Students may also find it useful to know that in addition to using the internal search engine within Storify, and using a bookmarklet to capture outside content, they can copy and paste the URL of any webpage into Storify to import content.

I’m excited about the possibilities for integrating Storify in other ways in my MSW classroom. This refreshing platform has proven to be a reliable and creative social media tool for encouraging students to research, contextualize, and curate content. Below are just a few examples of Storify submissions by my MSW students:

Feminist Theory, Slut Shaming, and Rape Culture by whitentonm

Racial Profiling: Do I Look Suspicious? by Tony Theel

Prison: The New Slavery by MStellini

Women in Sports: Woman first, athlete second by Natalie Savoy

Opening Our Eyes To The Truth About Older Adult Abuse by Melissa Stumpo

The Disney Princess Effect on Young Girls and Feminist Theory by sternb13

Walking the Tightrope of Motherhood by Ellen Coleman

**Note, Storify is a public domain and students are aware that all submissions are public until removed**

How to cite this post:

Mitchell, J. (2014, January 5). Using Storify to Explore Theory in the MSW Classroom by Dr. Jamie Mitchell [Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2014/01/05/using-storify-to-explore-theory-in-the-msw-classroom/.