Social workers are challenged by the profession's Code of Ethics to engage in social and political action to create social change, and social work education is challenged by our Code and accreditation standards to prepare students for this challenge. Social policy instructors often need to adapt teaching methods in order to account for differences…

Features of the academic context of social work education threaten the loss of traditional educational attention to relational capacity, an indispensable condition for all forms of social work practice and thus a necessary priority for professional education. We argue that the development of relational capacity should occur in classroom as well as…

Social work educators face the task of integrating personal experiences into their teaching practice. In difficult topic areas such as child protection, violence, trauma, and abuse, the challenge of presenting material objectively is made more difficult when the social work educator has lived experience of these topics. This paper uses a…

Based on CSWE's 2015 EPAS, students in MSW programs are expected to have knowledge of research methods. However, an understanding of how students perceive these courses as they pertain to their future careers as social work practitioners is less known. This qualitative study examined what MSW students learned about themselves as a result of taking…

The movement towards competency-based education in social work has required a shift in delivery to more experiential learning opportunities for students. Looking forward, the Council on Social Work Education [CSWE] has instituted a Futures Task Force, exploring roles social workers may play in the future, with particular attention to the evolution…

This paper presents a step-by-step conversion of a face-to-face (F2F) entry level social work research methods course to a computer-mediated format. An overview of teaching practices and the important pedagogical foundations associated with this curricular effort are discussed followed by an introduction to the electronic platform utilized in the…

The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, a research-based seminal work, provides a structure for integrating a collaborative constructivist approach in course design, implementation, and evaluation. The CoI framework suggests that by fostering three essential elements -- social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence -- a community of…

There has been a rapid increase in the number of online MSW programs in the past decade without a commensurate body of literature on their administration. This article acquaints MSW program faculty and administrators with quality assurance rubrics, which are research-informed tools intended for use by distance education providers to develop,…

Use of instructional technology in social work has grown rapidly in recent years. Despite this increase, there is limited empirical investigation of its impact. In this paper we describe the use of a virtual agency for the teaching of research methods and program evaluation at a school of social work. Evaluation of the virtual agency showed that…

Over the past three decades, social work education gradually has begun to embrace distance education as a viable alternative (and supplement) to traditional face-to-face education. While some feel that social work's response has been slow, compared to sister professions, it has been explicit, extensive and sure. This paper looks at the current…

Faculty and students evaluate the curriculum design and delivery of a synchronous online PhD program in social work that prepares scholar-practitioners in social work research, education, and organizational practice. The designers envision a collaborative community of scholars and leaders nurtured by a cohort-based, sequenced curriculum, and…

Attention has been given to the revised National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics that guides social worker use of technology. The revision of the NASW Code of Ethics has signaled a transition in the profession toward ethical online practice using modern techniques and contemporary tools. Practicing social workers are applying…

The online environment challenges social work educators in their approach to developing students' cultural awareness and culturally competent skills. To develop student competencies, it is important for accredited social work programs to consider both their explicit and implicit curricula. Although research has focused on the influence of…

With the growth of online and distance education in social work, faculty training and support need to be provided to ensure high-quality online social work education. A model for training social work educators in online teaching is outlined that focuses on pedagogy, technology, and social work values. Columbia University School of Social Work's…

The HyFlex blended learning model is a student-driven approach that allows students to determine what blended learning they prefer to meet their unique needs. In a HyFlex course, students are presented with a choice with each class session -- whether to attend face-to-face or participate online. This article introduces social work educators to the…