Developing an interactive and web-based multi-media teaching package for group work practice skills training for social work students

Abstract

Social work training emphasizes both theoretical and practice skill learning. Among the different core social work skills, group work practice skills are the most common that social workers employ in their daily intervention. To help students effectively learn group work skills, effective ways of enhancing the teaching and learning of group work skills should be identified and developed. The teaching of group work practice skills in most social work training programs in Hong Kong commonly adopt the traditional training format, including class discussion, teacher demonstration, and role playing, and there is a lack of effective and useful digital or audio-visual training materials. This project is an innovative initiative in developing two parts of interactive and web-based multi-media teaching packages for group work practice skill training for social work students. The first part is to produce four sets of simulated training materials on group work skills in digital movie format, emphasizing interactive and problem-based learning. Each set of materials lasts for 10-15 minutes. The production of the training materials is student-centered and realistic because the selection of the specific areas of skills and problem situations will be based on the analysis of data collected from the focus group interviews with social work students, social workers and practicum teachers. The second part is to produce after-class interactive, multi-media, and self-learning exercises on the four identified skills. This interactive and self-learning training kit will be produced in a web-based and e-learning format. Four exercise that is 5 minutes long each will be produced. The two parts will be uploaded on the Internet and will be used in the group work skill training courses in social work programmes in CityU. This project aims to enhance interactive and problem-based learning in group work skills training using multi-media technology. It also enables students to review the teaching materials from home. It helps students to use the e-learning method to promote their self-learning and self-discovery capacity in skill practice. This project offers an opportunity to widen the teaching modalities of skills training and explore the effectiveness of interactive, multi-media, and e-learning methods in practice teaching.