Creating community in online critical social work courses
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21495964 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rose C B Singh (0000-0002-8162-9497, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, corresponding author), Renée Nichole Ferguson (0000-0002-0821-9221, Toronto Metropolitan University) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 971-978 |
| Publication date | 2026-05-19 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Work Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0261-5479 • E-ISSN: 1470-1227 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/02615479.2024.2320716 |
| OpenAlex | W4392297654 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 14 |
This piece shares a practical participation assignment that emphasizes community-building, activism, collective learning, and contributions. Grounded in critical and inclusive pedagogical approaches, this assignment strives to create and model critical social work practices that require learners to be thoughtful and intentional about their engagement with the community both within and beyond the borders of the virtual classroom. We included this participation assignment in asynchronous online critical social work courses and continue to develop the assignment based on student experiences and feedback. We share the strengths of the assignment, for example, community-building, mutual peer support, countering the isolation that is commonly experienced in online learning, critical self-reflection and self-evaluation, opportunities for student choice, and encouragement of social justice activism outside of the course, and bringing this back into the course in meaningful ways. We also indicate contradictions and challenges of the assignment, for instance, individualistic expectations of participation, resistance from learners to non-traditional assignments, unsettling dominance in curriculum, and the corresponding implications on student evaluations. Lastly, we share our hopeful roadmap for support and implementation of critical and inclusive pedagogical approaches for online social work education and creative assignments that build community inside and outside our learning and teaching contexts
Engineering ethics · Medical education · Pedagogy · Political science · Sociology · Engineering · Higher Education Practises and Engagement · Medicine · Psychology · Social Work Education and Practice · Social Work
Gender and cultural bias in student evaluations
Radical Flexibility and Relationality as Responses to Education in Times of Crisis
Paradoxes, contradictions, and dilemmas
Transitioning to online teaching
Critical Pedagogy in Online Social Work Education
Educational development for responsible graduate students in the neoliberal university
Gender Bias in Student Evaluations of Teaching
Integrating Critical, Engaged, and Abolitionist Pedagogies to Advance Antiracist Social Work Education
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |