City students go bush: the process of virtual community building in rural social work field education.

Waugh, Fran ; Hart, Deborah

INTRODUCTION

This article describes the development of a pilot project to support a group of final year social work students to undertake an 80-day social work field education placement between April and August 2002 in rural, regional and remote communities in New South Wales and New Zealand. The project involved capturing the learning objectives of our on-campus fortnightly placement classes and to deliver this educational experience online through the use of a Web Course Tools (WebCT) platform.

We intend in this article to: outline the methods we used to provide this learning experience online; discuss our efforts to create a 'virtual community' of reflective online learners; outline the evaluative framework and methods we are using in our ongoing research on the effectiveness of online technology in supporting students on placements in rural settings; share feedback we received from the students about their experience of being part of a community of online learners; reflect on our own experience of developing, facilitating and participating in this pilot project; and finally, to discuss our preliminary findings on the benefits and costs of this pilot project.

We would like to begin by discussing our rationale for developing the online classes. In 1995 we were forced to suspend our rural placement program for two reasons: firstly, because we were unable to stretch our teaching resources to provide adequate support to students in rural placements and secondly, because we did not want students to miss out on the experience of attending our regular program of fortnightly on-campus placement classes. We regularly receive requests from social workers in rural and regional communities to supervise final year students as part of a strategy to address ongoing graduate recruitment problems. A proportion of our students are residents of rural and regional communities who intend to return to the country to work. Other students express an interest in confronting new challenges and some of these students go on to apply for rural positions on graduation. We are also very aware of the emerging pressures on rural communities and we share the view expressed so persuasively by Margaret Alston in the Australian Social Work journal that there is an important role for social work in forging rural community development (Alston 2002).

Three key questions form the basis of our ongoing research. The first question focuses on content issues, namely, what are the key elements of our on-site (campus) field education program that we need to capture in an online text based environment? The second question focuses on process issues, namely, what are the key processes in developing a community of active and reflective learners and how can we facilitate this community online? The third question focuses on evaluation issues, namely, what are the costs and benefits for students and teachers in being involved in online teaching and learning in the rural field education pilot project.

CONTENT

Firstly, we will focus on the key elements of the on-site (campus) field education experience we wanted to capture online. The Sydney University field education experience consists of three important components: the agency program, concurrent placement classes, and peer support and accountability groups.

The agency program: our students undertake an 80-day block placement in the final year of the BSW program (April to August).

Concurrent placement classes: students also attend fortnightly two-hour classes on campus throughout the placement. The classes are facilitated by a full-time university educator or a contracted practitioner. The class teacher also takes on the role of placement liaison and participates in the assessment of a student's performance. The placement classes group students together with peers who are undertaking a field education placement in a similar context of practice--eg. social work in hospitals; social work in statutory settings; social work in community development or policy or research, etc. Students are required to read an assigned article for each class and to complete a short written assignment answering key questions about the relevance of the reading to their practice experience. Students are also required to conduct a presentation or workshop before their student peers towards the end of their placement about an aspect of their field education experience.

We consider the concurrent placement classes to be an important element in the students' overall field education learning experience. The educational framework for the classes is geared towards encouraging students to move from the specific knowledge they are mastering in the agency program towards exploring broader understandings about the range of roles for social work in policy and practice. The placement class program is based on a constructivist approach to learning whereby students discover and construct new meanings from their interactions with peers and university educators. An effort is made to strike a balance between processing placement experiences and exploring ideas to assist students to make new sense of the complexity of practice within particular contexts. We aim in the placement classes to create and support a community of critical and reflective learners who support each other through a challenging but rewarding educational experience.

In an evaluation of the placement class experience conducted in 2001 (1), this cohort of students told us they valued the following aspects of their classes:

* Hearing about other students' experiences (comparing placement tasks and normalising their own experience);

* They provide a safe context in which to ventilate, discuss issues and raise concerns;

* It is a good opportunity to reconnect with the University and with other students;

* Provides a break from 'doing' placement tasks to reflecting on their learning;

* Being with students who were in a similar placement context;

* A forum for discussing theory/practice relationships;

* Provides an opportunity to look at the 'bigger picture'; and

* Appreciated the support of other students and the class teacher.

Our students also meet in peer support and accountability groups throughout the agency program. The purpose of peer support and accountability groups is for students to develop a discipline of using a peer network for encouraging reflective practice and for evaluating their own and their student colleagues' effectiveness. These groups are not moderated by university educators but students are required to provide two written reflections on the outcome of these group meetings. The peer support and accountability groups were valued highly by the majority of this cohort of students as a forum for processing and sharing experiences with a small group of student colleagues in a non-threatening context. Students report that they make considerable gains in problem solving and self care in these fortnightly informal small groups. (2)

OUR ONLINE FIELD EDUCATION PROGRAM

Our online field education program aimed to capture the various elements that underpin the on-site field education experience and peer support and accountability groups. In a sense, we were attempting to replicate the educational experience and support functions of on-site classes within the sterile text based environment of the information superhighway.

The rural placement class consisted of ten students who were in field education placements in regional, rural and remote communities in New South Wales and New Zealand. These students all nominated to undertake a rural placement and they all agreed to participate in the pilot online placement class project. We brought the students together on campus in the week before the commencement of placement to begin the process of group formation and to allow them to obtain some hands-on experience in using the WebCT platform.

The online placement classes followed a similar format to the on-site classes. Students were required to complete an assigned reading and to submit a written response to a question that asked them to relate the major themes from the reading to their practice experience on placement. Instead of sitting in a class together each fortnight on campus, the students were required to log-in to a WebCT site via the Sydney University Intranet to post their fortnightly assignment and to engage in an asynchronous (not at the same time) threaded (thematically linked) discussion with their online class colleagues. They were required to read all of their peers' written responses to the assigned question and to choose two postings to provide comments on. They were asked to comment on issues of similarity and difference in experience in response to their colleagues' postings. We divided the larger group into two smaller groups of five students and we each facilitated one of the classes for the duration of the placement. We provided individual feedback to each of the students on their postings. These comments were unseen by the other members of the group. We then took it in turns to provide a summary of what we saw as the major themes emerging from the combined group discussions. This summary was sent to all members of the online class.

The students also met in one of two 'virtual' online peer support and accountability groups throughout the placement. We were 'locked-out' of these discussions as we would have been if the groups were meeting on campus. The students were required to provide two written reflections on the usefulness of the peer support groups at the end of the placement.

We are now in the process of conducting an evaluation of the pilot program employing a content analysis of the 168 postings made by the students and teachers over the fifteen week period of the placement.

PROCESS

We decided to employ an approach to evaluating our online placement classes that was developed by the Community of Inquiry Project Team at the University of Alberta, Canada. The project team developed a methodology to systematically evaluate online distance education programs in Canada. This evaluative model is based on the hypothesis that reflective learning occurs through the interaction of three core components: cognitive presence, teaching presence and social presence. (3)

The first element in the model is the development of a 'cognitive presence' which Garrison and Archer (2000) define as: 'the extent to which participants in any particular configuration of a community of inquiry are able to construct meaning through sustained communication' (2000, 2) The second element is a 'teaching presence' which is defined as:

 the design, facilitation and direction of cognitive and social
 processes for the purpose of realizing personally meaningful and
 educationally worthwhile learning outcomes. This can be achieved
 through designing and managing learning sequences, providing
 subject matter expertise, and facilitating active learning
 (Anderson, Rourke, Garrison and Archer 2001, 5)

The third element is 'social presence' defined as:

... the ability of learners to project themselves socially and emotionally in a community of inquiry. Social presence is the ability of learners to project their personal characteristics into the community of inquiry, thereby presenting themselves as 'real' people. (Rourke, Anderson, Garrison and Archer 1999, 52)

We value this model because we believe it represents the various elements that we assess as being critical to the development of a good educational experience in any context. We set out to investigate how this educational experience could be captured and replicated in an online environment.

The following table shows how these three components of the educational process interact in the development of a community of inquiry.

While each of these elements (cognitive, teaching and social presence) is critical in the development of a community of learners, the element of social presence was of particular interest to us in the online environment. Critics of online education emphasise the isolated and sterile climate created when students are forced to sit in front of a computer to interact with each other and with educators (Salmon 2000; Gunn 2001). We were interested to examine how social presence could be facilitated and evaluated in our online group. The creation of a warm, open and trusting environment supports cognitive objectives through its ability to instigate, sustain and support critical thinking. What was the evidence that social presence developed in the online group?

MEASURING SOCIAL PRESENCE IN ONLINE LEARNING

The University of Calgary's Community of Inquiry Project Team outlines a framework for measuring social presence in online learning (Anderson, Rourke, Garrison and Archer 1999). The Project Team has devised an evaluation model that employs content analysis of text postings to assess what they identify as three elements of social presence, namely:

* 'Affective': expression of emotions, sense of humour, self-disclosure;

* 'Interactive': continuing a thread, expressing appreciation, agreement or disagreement, asking questions; and

* 'Cohesive': addresses or refers to the group using inclusive pronouns.

The suggested indicators for these categories are: expression of emotion; sense of humour; self-disclosure; continuing a thread; expressing appreciation; agreement or disagreement; asking questions and addressing or referring to members of the group using inclusive pronouns (Anderson et al 2001, 5). It is proposed that the existence of social presence can be measured by a content analysis of the written texts of students' online postings. Bryman (2001) defines content analysis as: 'an approach to the analysis of documents and texts that seeks to quantify content in terms of predetermined categories and in a systematic and replicable manner.' (2001, 180)

We set out to analyse social presence in our online classes by reading through sections of text posted on the site and by looking for examples of the various indicators identified above. The students gave their permission for us to use artefacts from the site in our research so we have provided examples of our analysis below. All identifying data has been removed and numbers in brackets represent the order in which the material was posted to the site.

Our preliminary assessment from our review of the students' postings to the site is that there was a strong social presence developing over the course of 15 weeks of involvement in the online class. This was supported by an initial face-to-face preparation workshop which we consider essential in setting the climate for effective online learning. We also attempted to construct activities online that we felt would facilitate the development of social presence (for example, placing photos of the students on the homepage of the site).

Our continuing content analysis of the students' texts will assist us to formally evaluate the extent to which our teaching presence allowed the students to engage in the educational experience online. We are also drawing on written and verbal feedback provided by our students at the completion of the virtual placement classes to inform our evaluation of the experience.

While we acknowledge that the students' participation in their peer support and accountability groups would have contributed to their sense of social presence we are not able to comment on the extent to which they did as we were not privy to these groups.

STUDENTS' WRITTEN AND VERBAL EVALUATION

At the completion of the placement, we asked the students to complete a written evaluation of their field education placement and their online placement class experience. We followed this up with a face-to-face meeting with the students to explore their answers more fully. We were interested to evaluate the costs and benefits for students (and for us as teachers) in being involved in online teaching and learning in the rural field education pilot project.

The students identified the following benefits of being involved in the online placement classes:

* It enabled them to undertake a rural placement (something they valued highly and would not have been able to do without the online technology);

* Flexibility--they could log-in at any time of the day;

* An opportunity to read about other students' work and ideas;

* Unlike the campus classes, they felt they had time to consider and digest others' responses before replying;

* Their writing and analytical ability improved because they were able to read their student colleagues' written responses (ie. modelling occurred);

* It was helpful to receive feedback from teachers and other students about posting;

* It was a good opportunity to hear about practice and policy issues in other rural settings;

* They felt it reduced a sense of isolation they experienced in being away from campus;

* The program engaged students' interactive and collaborative learning process. Members of the group said they felt like they were letting their peers down if they did not respond on time; and.

* They believed the online site was user friendly. The students went on to identify the following costs in participating in this online program:

* The time it took to read an article, compose and post responses to the assigned question, to read nine others responses and to comment on two other students' responses;

* They initially felt anxious about posting work for others to read;

* It was sometimes difficult to access the Internet;

* There was an absence of non-verbal cues in the online environment;

* It wasn't as easy to participate in informal social interaction, for example, one student commented that she missed the chats before and after class;

* There were additional financial costs for some students--STD or Internet cafe charges; and

* Online peer support and accountability groups were useful but became increasingly difficult to commit to because of time constraints. Peer support more difficult in an asynchronous text environment.

In summary the benefits and costs identified by the students mirrors a number of issues raised by Murphy and Linden (2001). Their study described and explored students' perceptions about the use of WebCT in building and supporting online learning communities. It focussed on how WebCT contributed to success and, in particular how students created an online learning environment amongst themselves. In our case success was the opportunity for students to undertake meaningful rural placements.

KEY ISSUES IDENTIFIED BY US ABOUT OUR EXPERIENCE OF COTEACHING ONLINE

At the end of the course, we assessed the following benefits of co-teaching online:

* Developing and teaching in this program motivated us to reflect on educational processes, in particular how to support the development of a community of learners online. We believe these lessons are applicable to our on-site teaching;

* We developed new skills in designing and developing an online site;

* Flexible delivery--we could access the site at any time of the day or night;

* We learned a lot about team teaching online;

* The experience of designing and delivering the program enhanced our own creativity;

* Improving our networks with field educators in rural practice;

* Developing some good ideas for teaching next year; and

* Attending WebCT training workshops allowed us to establish collaborations with teaching colleagues in other disciplines.

We identified the following costs incurred in teaching this program online:

* The time it took for our own training, planning and preparation of the online site (assessed at around 25 hours for each of us);

* The time it took to deliver the program - individual and group feedback, daily monitoring of the site (around one hour a day for 15 weeks);

* Financial cost of mid-placement visits to distant sites;

* The absence of non-verbal cues in text based interactions; and

* Our own anxiety about charting new territory.

RECURRING THEMES FROM STUDENTS' WRITTEN AND VERBAL EVALUATIONS

There was overwhelming support from the students for continuing the rural placement experience and the online placement classes. All of the students expressed strong positive evaluations of their rural placement experience which is attributable in a large part to the commitment of the field educators who were involved with this pilot project.

We've chosen two comments from the students' evaluations which illustrate recurring themes:

 I think it was good to have time to read over and think of a
 response to the online discussions. It was good to exchange
 placement experiences and a good source of contact which
 alleviated a feeling of isolation from other students.

and

 It was reassuring to know that there was support and that other
 students were also available to respond to issues online.

The students were asked to suggest improvements to the program for the future. Responses included:

 More informal discussion/processing of experience--eg: perhaps you
 could include some exercises not based on a reading, eg. sharing an
 article from a local paper or describing important aspects of
 working in a rural setting. You could invite students to make an
 informal posting on any topic of their choice, placement oriented
 or not.

 Perhaps having some live chat (synchronous discussion) at
 times--particularly for the peer support groups

 Involve the field educators in some way.

 Reduce the workload!--something due every week was too much.

CONCLUSION

It is clear that sound pedagogy is the major factor influencing the creation of the online site and in particular what learning outcomes can be achieved by students' participation in this flexible mode of distance education. Other factors we consider critical include:

* Student access to and skill in using the online technology;

* Motivation of students to be part of a community of collaborative and self-directed learners;

* Priority given by students and university facilitators' to engage in class discussions;

* The level of support the university provides in developing and maintaining online sites;

* Preparing students to participate in a meaningful way in order to enhance their learning on placements is important; and

* Providing additional support to field educators by allowing them to access university resources is important to developing ongoing partnerships between the field and the university which we hope to address in the future.

Finally online field education is a critical tool for assisting students to undertake placements in rural settings. The online peer support element has the potential to be developed to assist other social workers who might be facing isolation in either rural or remote areas or to assist practitioners undertaking post-graduate studies.

REFERENCES

Alston, M. (2002) 'From local to global: Making social policy more effective for rural community capacity building', Australian Social Work, 55(3), 214-226.

Anderson, T., Rourke, L., Garrison, D.R. and Archer, W. (1999) 'Assessing social presence in asynchronous, text-based computer conferencing', Journal of Distance Education, 14(3), 51-70.

Anderson, T., Rourke, L., Garrison, D.R. and Archer, W (2001) 'Assessing teaching presence in a computer conferencing context', Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 5(2), 1-17.

Bryman, A. (2001) Social Research Methods, Oxford University Press, New York.

Garrison, T. and Archer, W. (2000) 'Critical Thinking in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education', Internet and Higher Education, 11(2), 1-14.

Gunn, C. (2001) Effective Online Teaching: How Far Do the Frameworks Go? In Meeting at the Crossroads: Proceedings of the 18th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education, Melbourne 9-12 December.

Murphy, T. and Linden, J. (2001) Building and Supporting Online Learning Environments through Web Course Tools: It is Whippy, but Does it Work? Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists: Agricultural Communications Sections.

Rourke, L., Anderson, T., Garrison, D.R. and Archer, W. (1999) 'Methodological Issues in the content analysis of computer conference transcripts'--available online at Community of Inquiry Website: http://www.atl.ualberta.ca/cmc

Salmon, G. (2000) E-moderating. The Key to Teaching and Learning Online, Kogan Page, London.

University of Sydney Final Year Students (2002) Unpublished Evaluation of online rural/regional placement experience.

* Author:

Fran Waugh: School of Social Work and Policy Studies, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney. Telephone: (02) 9351 4207. Fax No: 9351 3783. Email: f.waugh@edfac.usyd.edu.au

Deborah Hart: School of Social Work and Policy Studies, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney. Telephone (w): (02) 9351 2281. Fax No: 9351 3783. Email: d.hart@edfac.usyd.edu.au

(1) Unpublished evaluation of the 2001 third year field education experience completed by 83 third year BSW students at the completion of their first placement.

(2) Unpublished evaluation of the 2001 third year field education experience completed by 83 third year BSW students at the completion of their first placement.

(3) Further details about this project are available at the following website: http://www.atl.ualberta.ca/cinc/

Table 1: Explaining the core components in developing a community of
learners

Teaching presence Cognitive presence Social presence

Designing and managing Ability to construct The ability of learners
learning sequences meaning through to project themselves
 sustained socially and
 communication emotionally in a
 community of inquiry

Providing subject Supports cognitive
matter expertise objectives through its
 ability to instigate,
 sustain and support
 critical thinking

Facilitating active learning

Table 2: Examples of postings illustrating elements of social presence

Category Indicators Example

Affective Expression of "Whilst reading this article I felt I
 emotions was caught in the middle, not fitting
 into the rural placement group or the
 Sydney placement
 group" (no. 59)

 "I'm enjoying reading the responses.
 Here's mine. Sorry it's a bit
 longwinded" (no. 61)

 "I can relate to your feelings of
 isolation as UII didn't know anyone
 in [town] before arriving" (no. 66)

 "Hey everyone. Here's my final
 response for field education , a bit
 sad I know..." (no. 246)

 Use of humour "Here's my response to [student's
 name] at the Back of Bourke" (no. 70)
 "Is this sounding complicated? I
 could go on and on...and usually do!
 Anyway, time to stop. This long
 message will put a strain on your
 patience and might even bring the
 Internet connection down in [remote
 regional town]" (no. 96)

 Self-disclosure "The shock of moving from a
 cosmopolitan city to a small town
 where you could have shot a cannon
 down the main street at 7pm
 melody would have known is really
 strange and something I'm not used to
 yet" (no. 55)

 "On my first night I was asking
 myself, what am I doing here?" (no.
 58)

Interactive Continuing a "There were a number of issues
 thread brought up in [student's] response
 that I felt I could relate to
 personally and in terms of social
 work practice" (no. 66)

 Expressing "Hi-I'm slowly getting my act
 appreciation together. Hope you are all busy and
 having as great a time as I am" (no.
 151)

 Referring Note: This was the norm as students
 explicitly to were required to respond to two other
 others' messages students' postings on the assigned
 topic

 Complimenting "Firstly, I was very impressed with
 your collective responses. You have
 addressed the important issues
 contained in the article but you have
 also done a great job in engaging
 with each other and drawing out
 commonalities and differences" (no.
 96)

 Asking questions "Hi everyone. My hands have just
 thawed out enough to type after a
 freezing morning in [town]. Is
 anyone else feeling the cold?"
 (no. 228)

Cohesive Refers to the "Hi everyone, here's my response,
 group using sorry it's very late. Hope everyone
 inclusive is having a great time" (no. 131)
 pronouns "Hi everyone, how is placement
 going?. Can you believe we are
 halfway through? It has gone so
 fast!" (no. 188)
 "Like everyone else I have been
 extremely busy of late" (no. 264)