This study assesses one social work program’s efforts to engage online students and enhance students’ relationships with faculty. The results suggest statistically significant differences, with online students providing more favorable ratings of implicit curriculum components. Implications for online education and enhancing student engagement include administrative efforts and specific teaching pedagogies.
This exploratory study assesses one online social work program’s efforts to engage students and to enhance students’ relationships with faculty. Social work programs routinely assess the implicit curriculum (Bogo & Wayne, 2013), which are features of the environment in which students learn (Council on Social Work Education, 2015). This study examines student perceptions of connection to their program and faculty support among face-to-face and online students in one graduate social work program. The results suggest statistically significant differences, with online students consistently providing more favorable ratings of implicit curriculum components. Qualitative feedback from students suggests that specific program features and faculty efforts contribute to these results. Implications for online education and considerations for enhancing student engagement include administrative efforts and specific teaching pedagogies.
Methods
This study uses a process evaluation framework to assess students’ feedback related to implicit curriculum items of connection to program and faculty support. The evaluation tool used an existing implicit curriculum survey with a phrase-completion format (Peterson, Farmer, & Zippay, 2014) and was administered online using Qualtrics online survey software. The sample included 71 Master of Social Work students from one MSW program with two campus locations and an online program. Quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS with thematic analysis of open-ended responses.
Findings
Results suggest statistically significant differences in student ratings of both connection to the social work department and faculty support. Online students uniformly rated engagement with the department and faculty higher than students in the face-to-face program. Qualitative comments suggest specific themes related to programmatic features and online teaching pedagogies associated with student engagement.
Implications
These exploratory results suggest that students’ perceptions of the learning environment may differ across program types. Specifically, these results suggest that students in an online program felt more engagement with their department and support from faculty than students in face-to-face students at the same university. Administrative efforts to build community and faculty instructional approaches may contribute to these findings. These results provide an opportunity to consider best practices in terms of efforts to address student engagement in all program types.
References
Bogo, M., & Wayne, J. (2013). The Implicit Curriculum in Social Work Education: The Culture of Human Interchange. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 33(1), 2-14. DOI:10.1080/08841233.2012.746951
Council on Social Work Education. (2008). Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards Retrieved October 28, 2014, 2014, from http://www.cswe.org/File.aspx?id=13780
Lee, E., Brown, M., & Bertera, E. (2010). The use of an online diversity forum to facilitate social work students’ dialogue on sensitive issues: A quasi-experimental design. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 30(3), 272-287. doi: 10.1080/08841233.2919.499066