Social Work Students Explore the Grand Challenge of Technology with Field Educators

Overview: We evaluate social work field educators’ (1) current use of technology, (2) perceptions and concerns about technology, and (3) plans for engaging interns with technology via a multi-method student involved study. Social work educators, researchers, clinicians, and field instructors will consider benefits, challenges, trends of technology and opportunities for application.Proposal text:

Background: In 2016, a collaboration of major social work associations set out a bold agenda to transform social work practice and education for the next decade by identifying and analyzing a series of Grand Challenges that would focus resources to transform the field (AASWSW, 2021). The Grand Challenge of Technology’s goal is to positively change the field by using technology to drive transformations producing more service accessibility, better outcomes, and a progressive change in social work’s relationship to technology, including in academia. Nowhere is the challenge of integrating innovative technology more apparent than in field education with its inherent bridging of classroom and field internship settings. This is due to (1) a lack of technology training during students’ educational curriculum, (2) limited technology training for faculty and field educators, (3) a need for further research to substantiate practice gains when using technology, and (4) a traditional bias for the face-to-face approach of field supervisor-intern training. To date, it is unknown how technology is used in field education settings. Social work educators, especially field educators, are in a unique position to influence the digital literacy and proficiency of the profession by transforming the spaces between the university and the community.

Methods: Our team sought to evaluate field educators’ (1) perceptions and concerns about technology, (2) current use of technology, and (3) plans for engaging student interns with technology. During August 2021, four social work faculty researchers received a $5,000 internal grant and IRB approval to conduct a multi-method research study with Field Educators. With assistance from five paid undergraduate social work student researchers, we conducted our study during Fall 2021.

We collected survey data from 54 participants, and five student researchers completed 15, 30-minute audio-recorded Zoom interviews. Descriptive and multivariate analyses were used to assess the current use of technology, feasibility, acceptability, competency, and concerns within field training programs. Students transcribed verbatim and open-coded interviews with a codebook. We then used thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) to report themes with illustrative participant quotes.

Results: We will (1) discuss the importance of understanding, using, and supporting technology, supported by our team’s manuscript addressing the need to harness technology in social work practice, (2) report multi-method findings from our study: (a) benefits and concerns/limitations of using technology, (b) types and uses of current technology trends, (c) interns’ experiences training and using technology, and (d) advice for field educators who plan to use technology within their agency, and (3) discuss our experiences involving five BSW students in our project.

Conclusions: Technology is ever-changing and presents an urgent area and one in which the Global Pandemic has proven must be an integral part of the social work profession. There is no returning to the more ‘traditional’ forms of training and conducting clinical practice. Dissemination of our findings and sharing perspectives from social work researchers, field educators, and students will assist with grant funding opportunities and invoking positive change among stakeholders, specifically within departments/schools of social work, field education offices, and social service agencies.