Developing web-based distance education for rural social work students.

Maple, Myfanwy

Background

The University of New England (UNE) is a small, rural university located in northern New South Wales with a long history of providing distance education to regional Australia, both in the local area and via distance education throughout the nation and internationally. There has been movement from the traditional paper-based distance education resources, to utilisation of online learning. The uptake of these newer technologies and associated pedagogy has been inconsistent across the University and within disciplines, primarily dependent on individual academics' skill and desire to move their teaching into the online environment.

The establishment of the discipline of Social Work has been on the agenda at the UNE for well over a decade. The development of the Bachelor of Social Work course gained momentum due to a University-wide restructure and newly appointed staff, with successful accreditation being achieved in 2008 and the first cohort of students commencing in 2009. The rural context and geographic setting of the University guided the philosophical framework of the discipline, namely that those who are trained in the bush stay in the bush. This philosophy rests on evidence that a student trained in a rural setting, which provides the context in which both students and educators live and study, is more likely to develop an ongoing interest in rural practice (for example, Critchely et al., 2007), thus aiming to help address the shortage of social work practitioners currently practising in rural Australia. Furthermore, offering Social Work at a rural university through both on campus and distance education provides an educational opportunity to rural or isolated students who may otherwise be excluded from such education (Alston, 2007) (1).

Within the Australian context, there has been a fall in the number and level of social services offered in regional and rural areas over the last twenty years with the Federal Government devolving responsibility for social welfare to the non-government sector and local communities (Alston, 2002). This has resulted in a decrease in the number of social service professionals and increased burden on the non-government sector. In contrast, the needs of individuals, groups and communities living in these areas have increased, with the added burden of the now longstanding drought and economic downturn. Rural populations have lower educational attainment and opportunities, but also experience higher morbidity and mortality, poverty and unemployment and poorer mental health than their city counterparts (Alston, 2002).

While employment prospects for social work trained professionals are relatively plentiful, attracting and retaining social workers in rural positions remains a challenge. Alston (2007, p.118) recently argued that this might be associated with the urban development of social work education (and, often, practice) and primary texts unwittingly reproducing and transmitting "urbo-centric understandings". With close on thirty percent of Australians living in regional and rural areas, the needs of rural people must be included in social work education and be made central to programs offered in regional areas to ensure graduate social workers are prepared for the unique and creative skill mix required for rural social work practice and are willing to engage in social work practice in regional, rural and remote areas of the country.

Development

In order to identify the key ingredients that would ensure graduates of this program are equipped to work in rural areas, broad consultation was undertaken with stakeholders from within the University, the profession (social workers and the Australian Association of Social Workers: AASW) and service users. This consultation also assisted in the careful planning of the overall content of the degree and the ways in which it would be offered. The outcomes of this consultation process were five guiding principles:

(1) A rural focused curriculum: to encourage students to understand the experience of isolation and rural practice. Isolation in this context refers to being marginalised by biological, psychological, social, cultural or geographic circumstances, which results in vulnerability and inequity and inequality of service provision. This philosophy well equips students for rural practice, however, as this definition of isolation equally applies to the experiences of marginalised and disadvantaged individuals, groups and communities living in major centres and metropolitan areas.

(2) Innovation through blended learning: where a combination of e-learning and face-to-face learning is used, within a broader problem-based learning model underpinning the curriculum, to develop social work practitioners who are innovative, creative and technologically proficient in their practice.

(3) Curriculum development through ongoing engagement and dialogue with social work practitioners in the field, with social work students, the AASW, and with consumers of social work services.

(4) Interdisciplinary practice and networks: Social Work is housed in UNE's School of Health, alongside Nursing, Counselling, Health Management and in the same physical location as the School of Rural Medicine, drawing on and integrating with these other disciplines in all aspects of course design and delivery.

(5) A research-rich culture: Incorporating a focus on social work academics' areas of expertise, the education of social work students in rural areas, and the use of technology to facilitate this.

While these five principles are interrelated, this paper primarily focuses on the first two, and deals with the teaching and learning development, design and implementation of the curriculum.

While the value of distance education is well established, the increase in technology over the past decade has seen a significant expansion in the ways in which students learn outside the traditional classroom and a shift from traditional paper-based modes of delivery to using the interactive capabilities of the worldwide web for greater teaching and learning engagement. While some courses can be taught fully via web-based technologies, a discipline such as Social Work does require some face-to-face teaching to supplement the learning that occurs when students are presented with materials online. The AASW also takes this view, requiring that qualifying social work courses taught via distance must include at least five face-to-face teaching days (or part-time equivalent) each teaching semester. To seek accreditation from the AASW, the design of the program was constrained by these guidelines, along with the content for qualifying social work degrees (Australian Association of Social Workers, 2008). Thus, Social Work uses a blended learning model by combining online and face-to-face teaching and learning to fulfil these requirements. Blended learning has been found to be a useful medium for social work elsewhere (for example, see Ayala, 2009).

The purpose of blended learning (referring to a combination of structured learning activities occurring online (also known as e-learning, see for example Rosenberg, 2001) and face-to-face) is to take full advantage of the different modes, using them to complement each other, thus maximising deep learning for students. Another important aspect of the multimodal approach is that it creates flexibility to provide materials, activities and assessments that anticipate and accommodate different learning styles. Fahy (1999, p.237) describes this as the opportunity to encounter varied resources and diverse assessment activities which offer "alternate points of view and interpretations", thus enabling students to explore "the intellectual landscape of the content domain by looking at it from multiple perspectives or through multiple themes" (Jonassen et al., 1997, p.122). This both encompasses individual learning preferences and challenges learners to extend preferences and perspectives as part of their preparation for professional practice. In addition to this fusion of delivery modes, problem-based learning is used to expose students throughout their learning to real life scenarios that reflect the situations and experiences they will encounter as social workers.

Pedagogically, this combined approach teaches students the value of, as well as skill in, "identifying], critically apprais[ing], and apply[ing] practice-relevant scientific evidence" both during their candidature and throughout their professional careers (Howard et al., 2003, p.1). Such a model aims for students to develop into proactive and self-directed learners through their study program, and fosters skills that they can then take into the workforce, moving a long way from rote learning into high order, complex thinking (McAlpine & Clements, 2001).

Within the blended learning environment, curriculum is designed with a student-centred, self-directed orientation, which facilitates learning through interactivity, networking and building communities of practice (Salmon, 2004). Thus, online learning environments in social work are structured with deliberate pedagogical intent and design to create spaces where students are 'doing' work, rather than being passive receivers of information. Learners are resourced then directed along scaffolded learning pathways where they actively construct their own learning with reference to the discourse of the profession, their own prior assumptions and understandings, and via discussion with and input from other learners.

This process draws on both cognitive and social/situational approaches to learning, wherein learning is seen as simultaneously a process of (1) making meaning by building relationships between different pieces of new information and between the new information and the surrounding world; (2) reinterpreting knowledge and understanding reality in a different way through processing new information, ideas and experiences (Saljo, 1979, cited in Ramsden 1992, p.26); and (3) increasing learners' awareness of themselves as participators in a community of practice (Lave & Wenger 1991, p.49). Within the latter "situated learning" approach, the educator's role is to create and explicitly draw attention to the "community of practice" context within which learning occurs as learners relate together about information that is relevant to them in the context of their developing professional knowledge and understanding (McDermott cited in Murphy 1999, p.17), hence connecting knowledge and activity, enabling the problem solving and learning from experience to become central processes (Smith 1999).

The changes of focus implied by these pedagogies can be challenging both to students (e.g. 'Where is the information that I need to learn?') as well as to educators (e.g. 'It is difficult to stop myself from providing the answers?'). An additional challenge is to utilise available technologies to facilitate the highest possible level of interactivity, which directly affects learners' engagement with online content. The greater the level of interactivity, the greater the student's involvement and engagement with the materials presented. This, together with the problem based learning framework, ensures students are effectively participating in a range of interactive experiences throughout the delivery of the course, enhancing retention and transfer of learning. Sequenced, incrementally structured interactivities which require learners to actively participate in order to advance through the learning progression greatly enhance the retention and transfer of learning over time. Therefore, the focus shifts from the delivery of information to the process by which the learner practises implementing the information and skills delivered in a variety of ways in different situations, allowing time for the adaptations and realignments necessary for deep learning to occur, with good outcomes for both students and educators (Gray, 2006). Building tasks into this process which then form the basis of major assessments is an added design bonus for both students and instructors.

A survey of all units currently offered across the two faculties at UNE was undertaken to identify units that could potentially be taught as part of the proposed Bachelor of Social Work to compliment the core social work content required by the AASW. Twelve such units were identified in consultation with the respective course coordinators, including the areas of Psychology, Sociology, Indigenous Studies, Politics, Social Policy and Counselling. Using the pedagogical background described above, a further eleven new core social work units were proposed. The proposed course then went through the internal approval procedures and then was externally accredited by the AASW in mid 2008. The existing units that are used within the Bachelor of Social Work are offered both as on campus and off campus delivery, with varying levels of online content. The remainder of the paper will focus on the new core Social Work units developed for this initiative.

Design

Students enrolled in the Bachelor of Social Work at UNE, whether they be on campus students or studying via distance, work together in their core Social Work units as one cohort of students within a Learning Management System (LMS, currently Blackboard CE6) which is part of the University's Virtual Learning Environment (e.g. LMS, e-Submission, TurnItIn). To develop teaching materials and environments that sustain this type of learning activity requires teaching staff who are able to engage with technologies in innovative ways. The technology, too, needs to be capable of creating and supporting collaborative and interactive space. Such space is relatively new and is referred to as Web 2.0 technology. Where Web 1.0 (when the internet hit mainstream use) offered access to information at a level never seen prior, Web 2.0 offers creation of new shared knowledge, information exchange, development of networking and social environments. Anderson (2007) offers six big ideas to describe the changing nature of Web 2.0 technologies that have vastly increased the interactive capacity of the internet, being the move to user-generated content (such as MySpace, YouTube etc), the power of numbers of people working together (such as collective intelligence, although not necessarily expert--for example, Wikipedia), access to data on a grand scale, web architecture that is user-friendly and thus accessible, the ability to network and openness with free sharing of information (for example, of personal experiences and thoughts in Facebook, Twitter and the like).

These developments in the e-environment transfer into the way that we teach online. Where traditional teaching (including distance teaching) was paper-based, lecturer-driven as to content, synchronised and controlled (in terms of content and marking), learning in the 21st century has moved on from this. Even the earlier iterations of e-learning (where online quizzes and e-portfolios were the norm) have metamorphosed into a collaborative learning environment where learning styles are characterised by skilled use of tools, active learning, and the demand for authentic learning experiences which feature construction rather than instruction. The learning pursued within these frameworks is task-oriented, characterised by: searching; social networking; 'don't know the answer, but know where to find it'; Google not library; and collaborate not compete approach (Elliot, 2007). This new era of electronic communication and information exchange sets the scene for an interactive and collaborative learning environment. However, in teaching content in disciplines such as Social Work careful planning of the online teaching and learning environment is vital to ensure students experience a purposeful and safe space to offer the support required to consolidate the new knowledge being formed (Coe Regan & Youn, 2008).

The following section presents an example of our experience implementing the first Social Work unit within a new undergraduate Social Work degree that uses Web 2.0 technologies in a blended learning environment.

An Example--Social Work 1a: Introduction to the Profession

The first Social Work unit that students enrol in: Social Work 1A: Introduction to the Profession, is taken alongside the traditional introductory Psychology, Sociology and Politics units that are typical of first year Social Work curricula. The aim of the unit is to introduce students to the profession of social work and equip students with the necessary academic skills for their candidature and into their professional lives.

The case study used as the foundation for the problem based learning in this unit revolves around a family of three (mother, father, adult son) who reside on a farm outside a small rural town. The adult son is initially presented to the students with complex problems that appear inconsistent on first presentation. In keeping with 'real life' scenarios, students do not receive all the information required to make sense of the case in the first 'session'--rather they are presented with new information each week, just as a social worker would experience when seeing a client weekly. Thus, on the (fictional) client's second visit to the social worker, some of the inconsistencies are answered when the young man discloses his mental illness. This new information helps the students to narrow down the information that they require to fully answer the discussion questions they are presented with. This process continues throughout the semester as they are presented with information relating to the young man's parents (who are struggling with significant financial issues and domestic violence).

Over the course of the semester students undertake three assessable pieces of work that are developed either individually (two written assignments) or in their small, online groups (one multimedia presentation). Preliminary preparation for these assessable tasks is integrated into the discussions that take place on the discussion boards. Students are asked to comment on the biopsychosocial content of the case, the ways in which the social worker may act, and the ethical and legal issues, as well as to reflect on what the information in the case means to them and their own values and moral beliefs. These higher order tasks integrate the tasks of compare, contrast, analyse and hypothesis (McAlpine & Clements, 2001) ensuring that students are becoming competent problem-solvers for their future social work practice. The first seven weeks of the semester are depicted in Figure 1, below.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

As students move through these activities, they are exposed to a range of online technologies to increase their confidence in working in the online environment. For example, students are linked into two quick self-quizzes that test their knowledge of the core unit information (e.g. the coordinators' contact details, the due dates of assessments, the dates of the on campus intensive school etc.) as well as resources available to them (a quiz that familiarises them with the library and the academic skills office). The content of these quizzes and tutorials is important for the student, however, the underlying motivation is to ensure that students gain confidence in using the tools associated with the self-quizzes and tutorials prior to being asked to complete assessments using these tools.

Implementation--Rewards and Challenges

Social work educators have used a variety of technology-based supports to enhance their teaching for decades, with the incorporation of videos, audio recordings and other multimedia to present students with learning environments linked to authentic professional practice (Ballantyne, 2008). Newer technological developments have extended and expanded the potential for such use in teaching social work students. However, these new developments also have constraints that need to be considered. For example, Learning Management Systems purchased by universities may be old and not have the functionality to create the environment required for the intended learning design based on collaboration. Students in remote locations lacking comprehensive internet services may have limited capacity to access certain web-based resources. Students may also feel uncomfortable in this new environment and may be unfamiliar with the emphasis on the self-directed, learner-centred philosophy that underlies this model. Educators, too, have changes to face in this new teaching environment moving from being the imparter of knowledge to being the creator of learning opportunities and moderator of discussions (Salmon 2004).

Most importantly, it is crucial to continue to draw attention to the importance of thoughtful pedagogy and intelligent, flexible curriculum design rather than to focus solely on the technologies that assist in student learning. As with any developing area, there is a paucity of evidence-based research to guide best practice (Siragusa et al., 2007). The design of the new core units are student centred in their approach, and flexible in their design. The following section will overview our experience of teaching the unit used as an example above in its first iteration.

While the overall evaluation of this unit of study was very positive from both on campus and off campus students there are a number of issues that need to be considered in offering this unit, or similar units in the future. These are: 1) the pace of the work versus my pace as a student; 2) working with people I don't know; 3) time constraints on the teacher; and 4) constraints of the online teaching environment. Each will be examined in turn below.

1. The pace of the work versus my pace as a student

This unit was designed to allow on campus students (predominantly full time) and off campus students (predominately part time) to work together on core social work content. This inherently means that the students will have varying life experience, be of differing ages and have varying levels of commitments outside university (including family, caring and work responsibilities). This broad variation in students' lives and backgrounds makes for an interesting diversity of views and opinions in the online discussions and during the on campus intensive. However, it also means that students have very different areas competing for their time and attention during the teaching period. For example, students who are full time, internal students are predominately school leavers and living in university college accommodation. In contrast, those who are off campus often have other time-pressuring commitments such as employment or family responsibilities.

In the experience of running this unit, along with other units in other disciplines, it has become apparent that there are students who 'drip feed' through the content--slowly working at the materials as they are presented and students who 'spurt' when they can carve time out of their busy lives to devote to university studies. These different ways of working means that this unit--designed for controlled-release case study content through the semester--was more enjoyable for those working at that pace. For those who wanted to quickly work through the materials provided in a concentrated session, frustration overwhelmed. This was particularly marked where group work was expected and different group members reached the group work at different times of semester--either holding up their peers, or being held up. The only assessable group task was commenced during the intensive on campus school. Where groups planned tasks well at the intensive, this substantially released this pressure. In groups who did not reach the same level of organisation in person, there were serious problems with the reaching the final output.

Interestingly, those who have had previous experience of being a distance education student appear to have the most difficulty in overcoming these new demands. This is multifaceted. These students are often older than their internal counterparts, so are not digital natives. They may have more family commitments than the younger internals, and they may have different expectations of the student experience. In future offerings of this unit, personal blogs will be trialled to offer students a place to work at their own pace, that is also visible to the teaching staff and other students, but does not rely on the students to work at the same pace. Such techniques should assist with the construction of shared knowledge (a powerful learning tool, see for example, Williams & Jacobs 2004) while at the same time providing flexibility that was not present in the first iteration. This change should also partly address the next point.

2. Working with people I don't know

Group choice in this unit was sequential--those who signed up for a group early were electronically assigned to the first group, the slowest to the last group. While this was purposefully designed to ensure that groups were of a certain number, and to deal with late enrolments/withdrawals the unexpected lessons were far more problematic. An unintentional outcome of this group allocation was that those students who were proactive and keenly motivated at the beginning of the semester all worked together in the first two groups. The next groups were filled with those who commenced on time and worked methodically through the materials. The final group was made up of late-comers to the unit, or those who were less able to structure their learning time. This final group struggled to remain on the tasks at hand, had conflict that required intervention to overcome, and generally performed more poorly than the other groups.

Students were assigned to a group during the first weeks of semester and did not meet in person at the residential intensive school until some six weeks later. During this time, there was a lot of discomfort in using the discussion boards, with students posting self-deprecating comments such as "I don't think I have this right ..." or "I'm sure I am not on the right track, but Following the intensive school, and working five days together in the small group format, group members showed a lot more confidence in expressing themselves online and sticking to task at the assigned times.

Asynchronous small group work online has been found to be an effective teaching tool (Schellens & Valcke, 2006). Notwithstanding the issues identified above, the depth and breadth of the students' postings during the semester showed an increasing complexity of comprehension of the content covered. Future offerings of this unit will have random group allocation to decrease the issues experienced in this offering.

3. Time constraints on the teacher

Moving to using the online environment as the primary mode of communication between teaching staff and students--primarily asynchronously--may give students a sense that the teaching staff are available at all times. Students do receive an introductory letter that provides information about the turn-around time for enquiries from teaching staff, including in the online environment. However, the experience of this unit is that students have different expectations when they have a query that they deem to be important and expect answers very quickly. When this expectation is not met, there was a situation where one student mobilised others in their personal concern, which quickly reeled out of control over a weekend. Implications for academic availability over the weekend became a serious consideration for the design and structure of subsequent units.

4. Constraints of the online teaching environment

UNE currently uses Blackboard CE6. This LMS was designed some time ago and at that time there was much less personal reliance on the networking possibilities in online teaching and therefore it is a constrained environment for completing collaborative tasks. For example, there is no wiki feature in this version of Blackboard making it very difficult for students to work on one group piece of work. Students overcame this constraint by emailing versions to and from each other. However, there were ongoing problems with different students using different versions of different programs. Because student email within the LMS stays in the LMS, students also then commenced emailing assessable work to each other outside Blackboard, making it impossible to track where each group member was up to. This version of Blackboard does have a blog function, but it does not function in a flexible and collaborative manner. These types of constraints have meant that significant time has been spent on working at the edges of what is possible within the technology of the University, to provide students with the community and personal space they require to experience the materials in the way they are designed.

Future Directions

These four challenges have set the foundations for a survey of student expectations and professional development over the course of the degree, which will commence at the end of the first year of teaching this award. This survey will track students' experiences of being a social work student and map these against their expectations of their professional development. This survey will help guide the award overall. At the individual unit level, subsequent iterations of this unit are taking into account the feedback from students and teaching staff to even up the balance of the four issues identified here.

In conclusion, new technologies and teaching possibilities are being developed rapidly in the era of Web 2.0. There are further possibilities for teaching and learning that are relatively unexplored (for example, using the alternate reality Second Life to simulate interactions and reflective practice). These possibilities, with rigorous evaluation, are exciting developments in higher education, and in particular in social work education. Offering social work education through these and other means makes studying Social Work a more flexible option, particularly for students who might otherwise be excluded from the profession. While there are many challenges in working in new and emerging areas, there are also many rewards and new advances. Using the experiences of a developing program to help inform us about what works and does not in educating social work students in this way assists in sharing best practice.

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(1) The author recognises that not all Australians have equal access to the internet and therefore equal access to learning online. However, the online design of this course is done in a manner that creates a small digital footprint to accommodate those students on slow internet connections. There are many other matters to be dealt with to fully address such inequalities, including providing these students with CD-based e-readings to reduce downloads during the semester.

Author: Myfanwy Maple Phd, Senior Lecturer, School of Health, University of New England. Email: [email protected]