In social work schooling, one lesson we are able to take away from the COVID pandemic has introduced many classes to social work schooling is to be prepared when a disaster or disruption requires an teacher and college students to rapidly shift a complete course, a category session, and even an task. In immediately’s world, this usually means understanding when and learn how to adapt our studying environments to include or regulate for digital applied sciences, each {hardware} (i.e., transportable gadgets, laptops, WiFi entry) and software program (i.e., studying administration methods). A social work educator can put together for future disruption of their classroom by creating a course-level Know-how Disruption Readiness Plan. Such a plan goals to thoughtfully and systematically suppose by how one will handle disruptions because of expertise to the academic course of after which share this data with college students. This strategy is really useful within the NASW Standards for Technology in Social Work Practice under Standard 4.06 Technological Disruptions, which focuses on what to do when expertise fails with on-line educating, corresponding to an influence outage or a laptop computer failure. It’s straightforward to switch this concept to different types of instructional disruption, together with conditions distinctive to a person (i.e., critical sickness and army deployment) or community-level crises corresponding to pure disasters. Additional, the disruptions happen with instructors as effectively, and having a plan at hand off one’s class to a different teacher could make the transition much less traumatic for you and your college students.
There isn’t a proper strategy to set up a Know-how Disruption Readiness Plan to your courses. Your establishment could already supply steering or have insurance policies established – please test along with your directors, on-line studying specialists, and workplaces of incapacity companies. Moreover, every studying surroundings is exclusive, so understanding the broader contexts of your college students and the communities the place you train might be useful. For instance, it’s possible you’ll train in a rural group the place WiFi entry is spotty or simply disrupted. Lastly, as an educator, you might have instances when your individual expertise is offline or breaks down. Being ready with backup expertise or understanding learn how to talk rapidly along with your college students is significant in instances of disruption. As you begin excited about your plan, listed here are some questions to think about:
- What are the doable conditions for expertise disruption? For instance, take into consideration discipline journeys, a single class session, all the course, and so forth.
- What would you do in case your course knowledge was misplaced or one way or the other compromised?
- What are different modes of communication?
- What are the sources to contact for help?
- Who might help me with this plan?
- The place, when & how is the plan shared?
- What are the establishment’s insurance policies that tackle expertise disruptions? For instance, contemplate inclement climate, incapacity companies, data expertise, and COVID insurance policies.
Listed here are some issues to incorporate in your plan:
- Have an alternate location to your course supplies. Be sure you have backup copies after all supplies that dwell outdoors of your studying administration system, corresponding to copies of PowerPoint slides, class readings, and hyperlinks to movies. These digital supplies must be well-organized so as to find and share the content material along with your college students in a well timed method.
- Outline and share your most popular channels of communication to your course. This could embody communication between you and your class and methods for college kids to speak with one another. Venues to think about embody your institutional e-mail system, social networking websites corresponding to Twitter, LinkedIn, Fb, or Remind (FERPA compliant), video conferencing software program, and even updating your outgoing voicemail greeting to incorporate class updates. Be sure to incorporate this data in your course syllabus.
- Think about the training wants of scholars with disabilities. In their blog post about supporting students who are deaf, Beth Counselman-Carpenter and Matthea Marquart share how they deliberate for expertise disruptions with dwell, on-line classroom classes.
- Present a listing of institutional helps. For college kids, contemplate together with contact data for such teams because the library, informational expertise, your LMS assist desk, incapacity companies, and pupil affairs. You would possibly even embody a map of the native WiFi spots on campus. Embrace non-academic helps as effectively, such because the campus meals pantry and pupil well being companies. For your self, you may want a listing with contact data to your colleagues and your human sources workplace. Be sure you have a tough copy of this checklist or can entry it in your laptop; don’t rely solely in your establishment’s web site.
- Incorporate trauma-informed educating and studying ideas into your plan. Set common instances to test in with college students or construct selection into your plan, so college students have choices for a way they full assignments. See this helpful one-page handout on trauma-informed teaching and learning principles by Johanna Creswell Baez and her colleagues for extra concepts.
For extra concepts to think about, please try the Technology in Social Work Education: Educators’ Perspectives on the NASW Technology Standards for Social Work Education and Supervision, which gives different interpretations from 26 completely different social work educators.
Subsequent, begin by writing your plan down. This doesn’t should be difficult and even one thing you share along with your college students; as a substitute, your aim is to have a written plan of what you’ll do when the expertise used to your course shouldn’t be working. For instance, write down what you’ll do when there’s a expertise disruption for the next conditions and every other that may have an effect on your course:
- Particular person assignments and studying actions, together with exams
- A single class session
- The general course
- College students with a expertise disruption
- Your personal expertise disruption
Lastly, take into consideration how you’ll share and talk with others about your expertise disruption plan. Listed here are some potentialities:
- Embrace data within the instructions for assignments. For instance, in case you have an internet examination in your course, embody details about what a pupil ought to do if the facility goes out whereas taking the instance.
- Have a press release in your syllabus. Right here is a few doable wording to your assertion:
- Know-how Disruption: The expertise (i.e., Canvas) used to help studying on this course could also be disrupted for numerous causes: energy outages, software program glitches, web outages, offline web sites, and so forth. If Canvas shouldn’t be out there, college students can entry course supplies right here (Cloud Drive). As well as, suppose a pupil experiences disruption with their very own expertise, corresponding to an web outage or laptop computer crashing. In that case, they need to attain out to the teacher as quickly as doable, utilizing the teacher’s most popular communication channels, to find out different doable lodging.
- Have ready statements for the signature line of your e-mail, the out-of-office options of your e-mail, or your outgoing voicemail message that you need to use within the occasion of a disruption that impacts all the class. That is just like notifications you would possibly set when you’re on trip or touring for work.
After writing your plan and placing it into place, don’t forget to watch and replace your plan. On the finish of each semester or educational yr, replicate on how your plan labored and in case you want modifications. Moreover, take into consideration methods to debate and mannequin expertise disruption along with your colleagues and directors in your educational unit. They could have extra concepts for you. Additional, by speaking about this challenge, you possibly can start to advocate for departmental or program-level insurance policies, making a tradition of sensitivity to and consistency about expertise disruptions in your social work program.
What different issues would you embody in your Know-how Disruption Readiness Plan?
The best way to cite this weblog publish:
Hitchcock, L.I. (2022, Might 20). Know-how Disruption Readiness Plan: A Finest Follow for the Social Work Classroom. Educating and Studying in Social Work. https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2022/05/16/technology-disruption-readiness-plan-a-best-practice-for-the-social-work-classroom/
