To meet the demand for highly skilled professional social workers, innovative and non-traditional methods of education are needed such as accelerated national market-rate graduate programs. In this presentation, we will share the lessons learned from the planning and implementation of a new educational model, including program planning hurdles, and successful resolutions.
The demand for highly trained professional social workers has grown in recent years, and career opportunities abound for graduates with master’s degrees in social work. To meet this demand for highly skilled professional social workers, innovative and non-traditional methods of education are needed - higher education institutions have been challenged to meet this need.
The UCF Online Master of Social Work (MSW) program is a national market-rate graduate program that provides fully online courses in an accelerated seven-week format. Innovation, excellence and an uncompromising commitment to educating skilled practitioners who strive to serve the at-risk segments of society—these are the vital concepts that form the core of the master’s in social work online MSW track.
To ensure the success of this program, existing relationships between the School of Social Work and the Center for Distributed Learning were stretched and re-envisioned during program development. While the new program is successful, this new model of educational design met many obstacles along the way that needed strategic rethinking, along with visionary planning and implementation, while working with existing faculty members that mostly taught in traditional formats.
In this presentation, we will share the lessons learned from the planning and implementation of a new educational model, including program planning hurdles, failed attempts, and successful resolutions. Key takeaways will include:
- 5 Obstacles That Can Derail Program Conversions
- 3 Successful Failures and the Lessons We Learned
- 7 Strategies of Successful Program Implementations