Health care, age care, social work, child care, immigrant education
Wednesday, 28 October 2015
PBL at Arcada
The social worker students that I have been practicing in to teach use the method PBL = problem based learning (this is a picture from the www.arcada.fi homepage). The group work process looks something like this.
Hello Sheila! What kind of social work education is it that you teach? Is it in high school or university? I wonder because we in Sweden only become social workers (as I am) at university level, before that we call it for example society programe students or child carers.
What do you think about Problem Based Learning? I use it with one of my online classes and students usually find it valuable in supporting their learning. Those who just want to skim across the top of the ideas and the learning are sometimes not so happy with it. I'll be interested in what you think about using the strategy.
Hello Malin! It´s called "socionomer" it´s not excactly socialworkers with the highest academic degree. Arcada is a university for applied sciences. We use Swedish litterature and one of the problems with that is that the definition of socialworkers in Finland and in Sweden vary a bit.
Hello Susanne! Well, I have only used the method in practice with really fresh student finding their way. It´s a great way to learn but the responsibility among the students and how they deal with the cases can be very different and some say that they would like more traditional lectures.
It sounds interesting to have on-line teaching. How do you like that?
I find that the students who want lectures rather than PBL sometimes want to be 'spoonfed' (do you have that expression?) their learning so that they don't have to do too much work themselves. Using a PBL approach means that students have to be more actively engaged in their learning.
When I use PBL online I create a scenario where students (I teach VET teachers) are given as much money and other resources as they need (hypothetically of course) to create a world class teaching and learning approach for the area that they teach in. They need to brainstorm the issues with the real colleagues that they work with, and for the few who are not already working as VET teachers they brainstorm with other teaching students. Over time I add more parts to the process, and they need to gradually make changes to what they are doing. In the end I take away all the money and they have to see what they can still use from their plans to further develop their own teaching and learning approaches. Students seem to really enjoy it. Some of the innovative teaching and learning approaches that they come up with are very impressive.
I like teaching online. It allows me a lot of flexibility. It also allows me to give more attention to those who need it, and let the others get on with their learning. I also like teaching face to face, but that isn't possible because we teach students from all over Australia.
Hello Sheila! What kind of social work education is it that you teach? Is it in high school or university? I wonder because we in Sweden only become social workers (as I am) at university level, before that we call it for example society programe students or child carers.
ReplyDeleteHello Sheila
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think about Problem Based Learning? I use it with one of my online classes and students usually find it valuable in supporting their learning. Those who just want to skim across the top of the ideas and the learning are sometimes not so happy with it. I'll be interested in what you think about using the strategy.
Regards
Susanne
Hello Malin! It´s called "socionomer" it´s not excactly socialworkers with the highest academic degree. Arcada is a university for applied sciences. We use Swedish litterature and one of the problems with that is that the definition of socialworkers in Finland and in Sweden vary a bit.
ReplyDeleteHello Susanne! Well, I have only used the method in practice with really fresh student finding their way. It´s a great way to learn but the responsibility among the students and how they deal with the cases can be very different and some say that they would like more traditional lectures.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds interesting to have on-line teaching. How do you like that?
Hello Sheila
ReplyDeleteI find that the students who want lectures rather than PBL sometimes want to be 'spoonfed' (do you have that expression?) their learning so that they don't have to do too much work themselves. Using a PBL approach means that students have to be more actively engaged in their learning.
When I use PBL online I create a scenario where students (I teach VET teachers) are given as much money and other resources as they need (hypothetically of course) to create a world class teaching and learning approach for the area that they teach in. They need to brainstorm the issues with the real colleagues that they work with, and for the few who are not already working as VET teachers they brainstorm with other teaching students. Over time I add more parts to the process, and they need to gradually make changes to what they are doing. In the end I take away all the money and they have to see what they can still use from their plans to further develop their own teaching and learning approaches. Students seem to really enjoy it. Some of the innovative teaching and learning approaches that they come up with are very impressive.
I like teaching online. It allows me a lot of flexibility. It also allows me to give more attention to those who need it, and let the others get on with their learning.
I also like teaching face to face, but that isn't possible because we teach students from all over Australia.