Using #MacroSW in the Classroom
#MacroSW is a live weekly Twitter chat for anyone interested in macro-level social work practice. The chat partners include practitioners and academics with a passion for working with policy, communities and organizations. In full self-disclosure, I have been an active partner with #MacroSW for almost a year now, and value the opportunity to be part of this online community.
Why use #MacroSW in the classroom?
Simply put, it is an incredibly engaging way to learn about macro social work practice. When students participate in an hour-long chat, they are engaging in the principles of Connected Learning, a theory that incorporates the digital technology into the learning process (Ito et al., 2013). Connected Learning suggests that learning in the 21st century must be driven simultaneously by the interests of the learner (Interest-Driven) and the academic requirements (Academically-Oriented) while occurring in an environment that supports openness, sharing and feedback with peers and others (Peer-Supported) (Ito et al., 2013). For example, if the goal of your class is for students to learn social work practice with communities and organizations, #MacroSW offers weekly topics related to social welfare policy, research, and practice with community and organizations (Interest-Driven) that are hosted and attended by a variety of social work professionals including students, academics, policy analysts and practitioners (Peer-Supported). Each chat includes a blog post on our website, numerous resources for the week’s topic, and a chat transcript which allow any social work educator to easily incorporate #MacroSW into a course or a specific assignment (Academically-Oriented).
How can you incorporate #MacroSW into your class?
There are four things you want to consider when creating an assignment with #MacroSW in your class:
1. Setting-up a Twitter Account: Students will need to create a free Twitter account, understand the basics of how to use Twitter, and be familiar with how to participate in a live chat. As the instructor, you will want to model for your students so set-up your own account too. Here are some resources:
#APM2015 Using Documentaries and Twitter to Meet Macro/Policy Objectives in Social Work Education
Today, Dr. Jimmy Young and I are presenting at the 61st Annual Program Meeting of the Council on Social Work Education about our social media assignment using a documentary movie and Twitter. There is a growing awareness that social media can be a valuable tool in social work education to help students develop and practice social work competencies. This presentation will inform participants about the development, implementation and evaluation of a social welfare macro/policy assignment for social work students using social media. In our session, we will The learning objectives for this session include:
1. Understand how the social media platform Twitter can be incorporated into assignments for social work policy and macro courses.
2. Demonstrate how social work educators can assess attainment of competency among social work students using a social media assignment paired with a Rubric for evaluation of the assignment’s learning outcomes.
3. Appreciate the role of professional collaboration in the development, implementation and evaluation of social media-based assignments.
Here is a link to the Prezi that we will show during the presentation.
Online Toolkit for developing a Personal Learning Network with Twitter
One of the benefits of having an online presence is making connections with professionals from all over the world. I met Dorlee Michaeli, MBA, LMSW over Twitter a year or so ago. She created and manages Social Work.Career, a blog that provides a variety of resources to help advance an individual’s social work career for current students or experienced mental health professionals. In addition to career-related resources, there are interviews, key learnings from conferences/workshops, licensure exam tips, self-care guidance and more for life-long learning as a social work professional.
This summer, we created online toolkits for social work educators based on our blogs. Dorlee’s toolkit, Social Work Career’s Online Toolkit for the Social Work Educator, showcases several blog posts from Social Work.Career that will help prepare undergraduate or graduate social work students become more prepared for a career in social work. Also included with the toolkit are some possible classroom assignments/tasks. We tip our hat to Ellen Belluomini who wrote this blog post; she was our inspiration for creating the exercises to meet the 2015 CSWE Social Work Competencies.
Here is my toolkit about developing a personal learning network (PLN) with Twitter:
A personal learning network (PLN) offers social workers and students a practical tool to stay current and share information about latest professional news, practice knowledge, and cutting-edge research findings. I recently wrote about how a social worker can set-up a PLN using professional accounts on different social media platforms.
My favorite social media platform for my own PLN is Twitter, and this post offers tips for using Twitter effectively to maintain and engage with your PLN. All of these tips come from my blog, Teaching & Learning in Social Work, which focuses on teaching and learning in social work. While some of the original posts focus on the social work classroom, the practices and content can be easily adapted by any social work practitioner for their own use with a PLN. Here are eight great ideas for using Twitter with your PLN:
Podcasting with Social Work Students – #BPD2015 Conference
I am presenting at the Association of Baccalaureate Social Work Program Director’s Annual 2015 Conference today (3/5/15) about podcasting with social work students, focusing on practical implications for course-based assignments. In this workshop, I will describe how I developed a podcast assignment for BSW students and will offer tips on how other educators can incorporate a similar assignment into their courses. The learning objectives for this session include:
1.Understanding how podcasting can be incorporated into assignments for social work courses at the BSW-level;
2. Describing how social work educators can assess attainment of competency among BSW students using a social media assignment; and
3. Appreciating the role of professional collaboration in the development, implementation and assessment using podcasting.
This presentation is based on a series of blog posts I wrote last year about podcasting in social work education:
1. Podcasting for Social Work Students, Part 1 – Describing the Assignment (1/16/14)
2. Podcasting for Social Work Students, Part 2 – Why use podcasting in the classroom (1/31/14)
Here is a link to the Prezi that I will show during the presentation (http://tiny.cc/PodcastPrezi_BPD2015).
#MacroSW Live Twitter Chat on 10/28/14
Jimmy Young (@Jimmysw) and I (@laurelhitchcock) have designed a social media assignment for social work students that involve students watching a documentary and then participating in a live Twitter chat. The assignment is meant for a policy or macro class and involves students watching the documentary Inequality for All, and then participating in a live Twitter chat on October 28th at 9pm Eastern Standard Time. We have partnered with the wonderful folks that conduct the #MacroSW chat for this special event and will be using their hashtag #MacroSW to facilitate the live chat.
We are interested in piloting this assignment in classrooms across the country and hope that other social work or human service educators might participate by including the assignment in class and providing feedback. Of course if you would rather just join the Live Chat only, that would be wonderful as we hope to have many individuals participate.
Teaching & Learning in Social Work by Laurel Iverson Hitchcock is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Laurel Hitchcock
Photo Credit: Jared Bash
