Comparing Student Evaluations of Distance Learning and Standard Classroom Courses in Graduate Social Work Education

Abstract

This study compared the student course evaluations of standard education and distance learning courses in the school of social work of one southern university. The sample included 14 distance learning (DL) and 122 standard education courses. A 20-item quantitative student course evaluation and a 7-item qualitative questionnaire were used to compare differences between social work courses taught in a standard classroom setting with those taught using distance learning technology. Comparisons of identical courses taught in both formats found that students rated distance learning higher than the standard classroom for a course having predominantly lecture content. Conversely, ratings for clinical practice courses were just the opposite with lower ratings for distance learning than the standard classroom. Results of a qualitative survey (n = 39) of students conducted at the end of a course taught by distance learning found that 73% of the students felt that distance learning technology interfered with class participation. However, 73% of the students felt the instructor handled technological problems in a professional and patient manner. Although 54% of the students reported that they would take another course by distance learning, more research is needed to determine what social work courses can be most effectively taught by distance and classroom formats.     

Service user and carer involvement in students’ classroom learning in higher education

The following article presents a small-scale qualitative study in which the student learning experiences from service user and carer (SUAC) involvement in social work, mental health nursing and social welfare courses at an English university were evaluated for any effects on student perceptions, knowledge, skills and practice. Using focus group methodology, student participants reported positive outcomes from exposure to SUAC classroom inputs such as a greater valuing of SUAC knowledge as expert knowledge, help with the development of empathy and an appreciation of constructive challenges to mainstream curricular delivery. Notes of caution were identified, particularly in respect of the sometimes unexpected levels of emotion displayed by SUAC presenters. Recommendations for meaningful SUAC involvement in higher education are made regarding the need to involve SUACs across the whole duration of a course; the need for the preparation of both students and presenters regarding boundaries; the fit of presentations with intended learning outcomes; more partnership delivery in classrooms between academics and SUACs (possibly with a differentiation between theoretical and practice inputs); the opportunities for SUACs to present their own situations as real rather than hypothetical case studies for students and the possibilities that may result from introducing a ‘buddying’ system between students and SUACs throughout their studies. It is suggested that the insights from this small-scale study merit further exploration on a larger scale if policy and practice in the field of service and user involvement in higher education are to move forward in an inclusive manner.     

Roles and Tasks of Field Instructors as Perceived by Chinese Social Work Students

ABSTRACT

From its inception, social work education has consistently embraced the position that field learning is an essential element of professional education. It is through field work that the student has the opportunity to apply knowledge gained in the classroom and to learn the skills necessary for effective social work practice

A study conducted by Fortune et at. (1985) on student satisfaction with field placement revealed that the field instructor or supervisor was a link to student satisfaction with the field practicum. Much has been written on the concept and principles of field education, with discussions on the field instructor's functions in field instruction. However, it seems that such discussions vary greatly in their degree of specificity in spelling out the field instruction tasks. On the other hand, relatively little has been reported on how social work students perceive the roles and tasks of field instructors. It seems obvious that students, with first hand experiences in field work practice, can contribute much to the formulation of knowledge in field instruction

Hence, it is vital and essential to study what social work students actually expect of the roles and behaviors of field instructors as contrast to what is written in the theories of field instruction.

This paper attempts to identify the set of behaviours and tasks perceived by students as important to the work of a field instructor. In the process, it is also envisaged that the “anatomy of field instruction” can be better understood through a clear specification of the activities involved.     

Case‐based Learning: Educating Future Human Service Managers

Using teaching cases in professional education programs has gained increased attention in the past several decades. While the use of teaching cases has been an important part of social work education, the majority of current casebooks focus on micro or direct practice issues and settings. Over the past forty years only four major casebooks have focused exclusively on the macro practice of social work. This analysis of case‐based learning is divided into the following components: 1) the search for practice wisdom emerging from analyzing cases within the context of management knowledge and skills, 2) case discussion in the classroom, including student and instructor preparation, case selection and integration into the course, case debriefing, student‐designed cases, and conceptual frameworks for teaching management, 3) a conclusion that identifies the benefits and limitations of case‐based learning.     

Practicing Lament to Teach for Justice: Reflections from a Survey Course

What pedagogical routines and rhythms can teachers in Christian institutions of higher education adopt to teach for justice? The article explores this question by detailing efforts to incorporate the practice of lament into the learning routines of a survey course on global poverty. Drawing on recent scholarship on practice-oriented pedagogies and lament theology, the discussion articulates a lament pedagogy that aims to deepen students' empathetic engagement with the voices of suffering they encounter in the course and to engender a performative response to injustices they confront beyond the classroom. In particular, the article details how the use of literary accounts written by non-Western authors who explore themes of disruptive social change, poverty, and injustice in their works intersects with an overarching practice of lament to foster enduring processes of dispositional formation in students. A closing discussion considers how the pedagogical routines developed in a global poverty course might be adapted to and implemented in courses across the liberal arts curriculum. The article makes the case that educators in Christian colleges and universities are critical in the ongoing public recovery of a practice of prayer and worship that is fundamental to one's engagement with suffering in the world.     

Social Work and Law Interdisciplinary Service Learning: Increasing Future Lawyers’ Interpersonal Skills

Social workers and attorneys both interact with persons from diverse backgrounds every day, yet although interpersonal skills are an essential focus of social work education, these skills are not addressed in legal education. Interdisciplinary courses in which social workers and lawyers learn interpersonal skills together and have an opportunity to practice them through service learning opportunities are a way to remedy a gap in legal education. The authors describe a project recently piloted at a large midwestern university in which law and graduate social work students participated in an interdisciplinary course with a service learning component requiring students to work together on cases. As one component of the clinic’s assessment, all students were pre- and posttested via an interpersonal skills survey. The law students showed statistically significant improvement in interpersonal skills at the end of the course. The results indicate a need for increased support for interdisciplinary education, specifically partnerships between the professions of law and social work.     

Queering the Social Work Classroom: Strategies for Increasing the Inclusion of LGBTQ Persons and Experiences

ABSTRACT

The inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) perspectives and experiences in the social work classroom is necessary to adequately include LGBTQ students and prepare graduates to practice effectively. Drawing from queer theory as a theoretical framework and the authors’ experiences in practice and teaching/learning spaces with LGBTQ youth, this article offers practical strategies for creating classrooms inclusive of LGBTQ persons. Queering the classroom builds skills in students beyond practice with LGBTQ people and communities, thereby enhancing their capacity to engage diversity in practice more generally and to advance human rights and social justice.     

Community College Students’ Experiences with Homelessness and Housing Insecurity

The goal of this study is to understand how students experiencing homelessness experience community college. In particular, the authors focus on the multifaceted traumas that negatively impact their educational engagement and persistence. The authors conducted a life history with one student experiencing homelessness on a community college campus. Based upon the emerging themes, interviews lasting approximately 60 minutes were conducted with an additional six students experiencing homelessness at the same college. Homelessness creates significant barriers for students. Residential insecurity often forces students to prioritize meeting basic needs over educational engagement. The participants consistently lived on the brink of residential crisis, which took an emotional toll. However, the stories emerging from this study demonstrate how important the participants felt postsecondary education was. They clearly connected their long-term stability to completing community college and transferring to a four-year institution. Unfortunately, their residential situations negatively impacted their ability to persist. Based upon the student experiences, the authors recommend more integrated services on community college campuses. The student narratives illustrate several important themes that have the potential to inform both research and practice. The participants viewed postsecondary education as a pathway to future stability. However, they experienced multifaceted and enduring trauma. The chaos of their residential insecurity resulted in constantly living at the brink of crisis. These students illustrate the need for integrated services at community colleges to support students experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity.     

Learning design for multiple modes of provision: the Zambian community school teacher development programme

Abstract

The use of technology to support learning is becoming ubiquitous in Africa. However, technology is more often used to distribute information rather than as a tool to mediate learning. The work presented here on a programme for Zambian community school teachers (non-traditional students) illustrates how learning design allied to appropriate theoretical concepts make use of technology to mediate learning. The objective of this course was to support Zambian community school teachers, with little formal teacher education, to use interactive methods to support their teaching practices. The research makes use of a constructivist-hermeneutic-interpretivist-qualitative paradigm to critically evaluate the learning design by experts. A social constructivist framework for learning design and technology mediation was used to create and evaluate learning resources. The work illustrates how a distance education paper-based course design is enhanced by the use of contemporary learning theory and digital technology to model good interactive classroom practice.     

Using Standardized Clients in the Classroom: An Evaluation of a Training Module to Teach Active Listening Skills to Social Work Students

This article describes the implementation of a module that utilizes drama students to teach social work students how to use active listening skills in an interview environment. The module was implemented during a semester‐long micro skills practice course taught to 13 undergraduate social work seniors in a western liberal arts university. Four drama students attending the same university served as clients. Clients evaluated the social work students' active listening skills at the end of the interview, and social work students completed self evaluations and evaluations on the module. Results indicated that the module was effective in helping students to learn interviewing skills and identify strengths and weakness regarding use of skills. Implications for social work education are discussed.     

Student teachers' perceptions of poverty and educational achievement

This paper reports on a mixed methods study carried out within the Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programme at the University of Oxford on the ways that the course sought to frame and address the link between poverty and poorer educational outcomes. The study was concerned with the views held by ITE students on the effects of poverty on pupils' learning, well-being, and educational achievement. The paper initially explores why these questions are important, how they are framed internationally, and how they relate to current education policy, particularly in England. Data were collected from student teacher pre- and post-PGCE course questionnaires and a focus group discussion. The findings showed a tendency for student teachers to associate low achievement more strongly with family and cultural factors than with socio-economic or school factors, although there was some evidence that the thinking of some students changed during their programme. Implications for policy and practice in ITE are discussed with a view to ensuring that the social justice commitments espoused by many such courses are actually enabled more effectively to influence the learning experiences of beginning teachers.     

高职创业教育课程学习体验量表的编制及应用

学习体验是高职创业课程有效性评价的重要内容。从学习沉浸体验、学习关系体验、学习获得体验与学习活动体验四个维度编制高职创业课程学习体验量表,并采用该量表对1204名高职学生进行调查,结果发现:当前高职学生创业课程学习体验总体水平处于中等偏上,仍有较大改进空间。其中,学习关系体验最佳,学习沉浸体验最差;学习体验与创业实践、创业自我效能感之间存在正向预测关系。依据研究结果,高职创业课程模式应由知识驱动转向实践驱动、学习方式由传授式变向沉浸式、评价指标由学业结果延向学习体验、课程资源由课堂支持走向社会支持。     

Professional movements,local appropriations,and the limits of educational critique: the cultural production of mixed messages at an urban middle school

Although critical ethnographers have explored in some depth the ways that social critique informs how youth assess their schooling experiences, the implications of social critique by educators themselves have been of much less interest. Yet, numerous professional educational movements have been wrought from social critique or, at the very least, from critique of school practices that fail to contribute to more equitable social outcomes. Featuring one middle‐school classroom contextualized by such movements in the field of education, this article presents an analysis of student appropriations of the messages embedded in a year‐long community service‐learning project. The project engaged students in democratic action framed by the question: Do our voices count? It is argued that while students embraced a newfound political agency through this work, the lack of opportunity to question individualism, the structural dimensions of urban poverty and their own relative privilege in the school ultimately produced social divisions rather than social critique.     

Building upon synergies among self-regulated learning and formative assessment research and practice

ABSTRACT

The synergies that result from synthesising conceptual models and findings from self-regulated learning and formative assessment research are launching a new era of scholarship. They drive new questions about how to help students to internalise complimentary self-regulatory and assessment knowledge, skills, and dispositions as well as how to prepare teachers and education systems to prioritise and support this work. The articles in this special issue illustrate the power and importance of studying how self-regulation and classroom assessment emerge from social, contextual, historical, and cultural factors. Four themes emerged from the articles in this special issue, including new conceptualisations of self-regulated learning and formative assessment, insights regarding teachers’ dual role in enacting and promoting self-regulation, recognition of the critical role of students’ ability to productively use assessment information, and the need to instantiate self-regulated learning and assessment literacy as formal and valued curricular outcomes.     

Relational Learning in Social Work Education: Transformative Education for Teaching a Course on Loss,Grief and Death

This article explores the relational learning model for teaching clinical social work practice. Evaluations of a course on loss, grief, and death illustrate that relational learning methods enhanced students' relational and communicative knowledge and skills, and contributed to a transformative learning process. Relational learning is a method of teaching that is consistent with the postmodern classroom and with the mission of contemporary social work practice.     

Introducing the use of a semi-structured video diary room to investigate students’ learning experiences during an outdoor adventure education groupwork skills course

Outdoor adventure education courses are used in higher education to develop transferable skills such as groupwork and problem-solving skills. There is a need for exploratory investigation into students’ perceptions of this experience. This study aimed to develop an innovative qualitative data collection method, and to use it to explore students’ perceived learning processes and developmental outcomes when taking part in an outdoor groupwork skills course. Participants (n = 40) were undergraduate engineering students who were taking part in the 3 day residential course as part of their degree course. Students’ experiences were captured whilst immersed in the course, using a semi-structured video diary room. Participants entered the diary room at different time points throughout the course and responded to openended questions. Following a thematic analysis, students were found to arrive on the course with mixed feelings towards groupwork and expected learning outcomes. Activities were enjoyable yet challenging, revealing students’ weaknesses and demanding a range of skills and coping methods. The outdoor environment added novelty, risk and natural consequences. Students reported developing a range of skills in groupwork, adaptability, persistence, planning, problem-solving, time-management, communication, leadership, cooperation, group reflection and team spirit, as well as benefits to physical activity, self-confidence, self-awareness, peer and staff relationships and internationalisation. These findings provide a base for future investigation into the long-term impact on student development and skill transfer. The semi-structured video diary room yielded rich data, contributing to the literature by offering a simple, yet effective, qualitative research method that can be implemented in a variety of contexts.     

Learning intercultural communication through group work oriented to the world beyond the classroom

Competence in intercultural communication has become a necessity for functioning effectively in our increasingly globalised and multicultural society. This study reports the use of a group project to enhance students’ learning of intercultural communication. Participants were from a large undergraduate class in an Australian university. The aim of the course is to encourage students to develop knowledge of intercultural communication by orienting themselves to the world beyond the classroom, and by learning from each other’s experiences and perspectives. In a group project assignment, students used the knowledge and skills gained in class to resolve practical problems that they encountered in intercultural interactions outside the classroom. This paper focused on students’ experience of working in groups, and links between this experience and performance on the group project. Our study confirms previous research that demonstrates active engagement in group work can enhance learning outcomes. It also goes further in showing that groups that more highly rated their learning of intercultural communication through the group work experience obtained higher grades on the project.     

关于“学、考、用三位一体”教学模式的构建与思考

＂学、考、用三位一体＂大致有两层意思：首先是学习、考试、实用要目标一体,实用是最终目标,考试以实用为目标,学习的目标是为了实用;其次是学习、考试、实用要方法一体,知识和技能如何实用,就如何学习和考试。这种＂三位一体＂的教学紧紧盯住素质教育的目标,扎根于学生目前的生活、学习及日后的工作实践,真正打破了课堂与社会实践的界线,能充分地利用课堂、扩大课堂,能极大地提高教学的效率。虽然要将它应用到各专业的具体教学中,还必须解决许多操作问题,但它值得广大教师去实践、去探索,对于把握教改的正确方向有着重要的意义。     

Using wikis to promote quality learning in teacher training

This paper discusses writing as a social practice and speculates on how wikis might be used to promote higher quality academic writing and support collaborative learning. This study of undergraduate teacher trainees’ online learning activities focuses on how shared spaces – wikis – might be used to communicate ideas and generate course‐specific content. The study also explored how students, through such activities, were able to improve their academic writing skills and engage more critically in learning. Data captured from student discussion boards and a post‐module email questionnaire (n = 35) were used to map student perceptions of the usefulness of wikis in support of their academic studies. The data indicate that most students raised their skill level in writing directly to the publicly viewable wiki space, in sharp contrast to the more informal content they posted on the discussion boards. The scope of collaborative writing was limited due to students’ reluctance to edit each others’ work, but students appreciated the shared environment as a means of discussing their work and the content of the course. Students reported that their academic writing skills had improved through their formal participation in the wiki.     

Examining Educational Climate Change Technology: How Group Inquiry Work with Realistic Scientific Technology Alters Classroom Learning

This study with 79 students in Montreal, Quebec, compared the educational use of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) global climate model (GCM) to climate education technologies developed for classroom use that included simpler interfaces and processes. The goal was to show how differing climate education technologies succeed and fail at getting students to evolve in their understanding of anthropogenic global climate change (AGCC). Many available climate education technologies aim to convey key AGCC concepts or Earth systems processes; the educational GCM used here aims to teach students the methods and processes of global climate modeling. We hypothesized that challenges to learning about AGCC make authentic technology-enabled inquiry important in developing accurate understandings of not just the issue but how scientists research it. The goal was to determine if student learning trajectories differed between the comparison and treatment groups based on whether each climate education technology allowed authentic scientific research. We trace learning trajectories using pre/post exams, practice quizzes, and written student reflections. To examine the reasons for differing learning trajectories, we discuss student pre/post questionnaires, student exit interviews, and 535 min of recorded classroom video. Students who worked with a GCM demonstrated learning trajectories with larger gains, higher levels of engagement, and a better idea of how climate scientists conduct research. Students who worked with simpler climate education technologies scored lower in the course because of lower levels of engagement with inquiry processes that were perceived to not actually resemble the work of climate scientists.