Prof. Dr. Seidenstücker, Prof. Dr. Schroll-Decker, what are you doing in your innovation professorship?

We are developing the new introductory course "Socially Integrative City: Organizations and Service Providers - Introduction to Social Work". We want to create new learning nuggets and video clips that can be used in multiple ways with social work professionals, test various moodle plugins, modularize teaching content, develop new forms of examination and, of course, implement them. We have also planned to establish a regular first semester survey in which we will ask students about their motivations, interests and self-assessments in order to be able to respond to these in the medium term by comparing them with practical requirements.

We also want to further develop two other existing courses. Firstly, the course "Child and Youth Welfare": here, too, we want to develop "learning nuggets" that can be used in multiple ways, create video clips with academics and specialists and implement moodle plugins. Above all, however, creative analog and digital discussion formats will be tested and developed.

In the course "Social Work of the Ages", the digital examination format will be successively developed and evaluated. In addition, interviews "from the field" from various institutions working with the elderly and elderly care will be integrated to show which coping situations arise at different ages. A podcast will also be produced for this purpose. The range of interactive elements for acquiring knowledge will be expanded.

How could other teachers, students and practitioners benefit from your projects?

Students benefit from the new introductory course - which they expressly requested - by gaining a comprehensive overview of the very wide-ranging fields of action, their working methods and the central methods of social work right at the beginning of their studies, as well as making their first acquaintance with their future profession and the key stakeholders. As this will be done with authentic "voices" from practice and will be underpinned by many different self-study elements, students will also be able to familiarize themselves with university learning.

In the other courses mentioned above, which are both aimed at students in higher semesters, students will also benefit from the variety of methods used in teaching, which will be extremely multi-perspective and practical at the same time - particularly through the use of numerous video "snippets" from experts and renowned academics. The testing of new forms of discussion should also lead to more students speaking up, daring to take a position, defend it, but also practicing being questioned.

Otherwise, we hope - and this is already happening - that we will deepen contact with social work practice, especially in the region, particularly through the production of our videos, in which experts and academics are interviewed about their work. So far, we have met with great interest and a great deal of willingness and are delighted with the incredibly exciting interviews. We are particularly pleased that some of the practitioners are also using the videos for themselves and their self-presentation. We are also planning a specialist day with regional practice representatives, at which we would like to present our teaching concept and show insightful interview contributions, among other things, and which interested students can also attend.

As far as our faculty is concerned, we will offer to present our newly developed content at one of the upcoming lecturers' conferences. If our colleagues are interested, they can benefit from our experiences as part of the collegial exchange and, if necessary, adopt ideas for themselves and their own courses.

What motivated you to want to realize a teaching innovation?

We both have an interest in the various possibilities of digital learning and teaching, which was also awakened by our experiences during the Corona period. Then there was the students' desire for the new course and the idea of designing it using new digital methods - we generally enjoy trying out different tools. However, we also particularly liked the idea of the interviews with experts and the associated proximity to current practice: we are effectively bringing practice and renowned academics, who students would otherwise only know from specialist literature, into the lecture hall. We will see how the idea is received by the students.

Why is it so important to pass on accumulated and acquired knowledge from experienced practitioners in a sustainable way?

The fields of social work, like many other fields of work, are subject to constant change. In this respect, it is very valuable for students to learn about new, current professional trends as well as current challenges directly from practice in addition to the established standard knowledge. At the same time, the many years of experience that experienced professionals and experts have at their disposal is also relevant, because it allows them to experience the changes in pedagogical action, procedures, legal regulations, etc. that have developed over the years.

Why is it particularly advantageous in social work to make courses interdisciplinary, methodologically diverse and digital?

Interdisciplinarity is of course a key issue in social work. Interdisciplinarity is already an integral part of the curriculum during studies due to the various disciplines related to social work. This continues in practice insofar as many professional fields of action in social work are located at interfaces with other institutions (justice, medicine, school, police, etc.). Interdisciplinary knowledge is therefore essential for social work to cope with the very wide range of tasks. The diversity of subject content in the degree program alone makes it necessary to have a wide variety of methods in everyday teaching: of course, we teachers use completely different teaching methods in a seminar on interviewing than in a lecture on the basics of psychology. In general, we assume that methodological diversity in courses can help to appeal to different types of learners, encourage independent, analytical thinking, promote enjoyment and interest in learning - and overall sustainable learning. Of course, digital learning also has to be learned first, but it is also particularly suitable for part-time degree courses, at least in the form of sub-modules, because this simply gives students more flexibility in terms of time, which is often particularly important to these students.

Incidentally, digitalization has also played a prominent role in social work practice for years, e.g. in the form of digital record keeping, digital counselling, chatbots, digital street work, etc. - Digital knowledge is therefore urgently needed.

In this video, the teaching innovation professors Prof. Dr. Schroll-Decker and Prof. Dr. Seidenstücker present their work in the field of professional orientation in the introductory phase of the Bachelor's degree program in Social Work.

News: Review of the event "Forum: Theory and Practice of Social Work - University meets Practice Partners" on June 20, 2024

Prof. Dr. Schroll-Decker and Prof. Dr. Seidenstücker invited representatives from institutions in the region where social work students complete their internship to take a look at the two places of learning in social work - university and practice. More than 60 professional representatives took the opportunity to gain an insight into changing teaching formats and media presentations. Together, they discussed the skills that social work students should acquire in their studies and practice.