Anne Karin Larsen, Bergen University College, Norway SW-VirCamp Consortium meeting Liepaja, 2 September 2010 Summary of the Pilot course Klas-Göran Olsson, School of Health Sciences Jönköping University, Sweden Anne Karin Larsen, Bergen University College, Norway

Content Development of a module in Community Work About the students Teaching and learning principles Presentation of the course and content Presentation of the Virtual Learning Material: The Virtual Book – Community Work from an International Perspective Student evaluation teachers evaluation Reflections from 2 teachers Reflections from 6 students Overall impressions

The Students 51 students from 9 countries applied 7 teachers participates– sharing the students in 3 groups Severe drop out: 1 March 35 are still in the course April 24 students in the course June 22 students has delivered their final exam, two has applied for delayed exam Only a minor group of students knew anything about CW before they started with this course BA students from 2 – 3 year, some MA students and professional social workers.

The Students 50 students from 9 countries applied 7 teachers participates– sharing the students in 3 groups Severe drop out: 1 March 35 are still in the course April 24 students in the course June 22 students has delivered their final exam, two has applied for delayed exam Only a minor group of students knew anything about CW before they started with this course BA students from 2 – 3 year, some MA students and professional social workers.

Principles of learning Situated learning perspective Problem-based learning, case-based, group work and discussions, chat, reflection and other ways students can be active participants in their learning process. Portfolio assessment A transparent classroom

“Social Presence” The teachers present themselves with pictures, video or a short written presentation The students do the same. By including pictures and stories – the experience of precens in a common classroom increase .

Weekly programmes and tasks

Assignments The weekly programme contains different tasks - the task can be a constructed as a task that require cooperation among the students - the task can also constructed as an individual task - teacher also give feed back - the task cover the content in the course, such as: * concepts and theories in community work * corner stones in CW theories such as empowerment, participation, ownership, transparency etc * project planning etc * case work; the Green Park Community * chats and role-plays

Virtual Learning Material – The Virtual Book

The EUROPE Magazine

Reflections from 2 teachers; Positive experiences: - Input from the students has been very good - The group work has been good in most of the groups, challenging in some ways - The tasks has been good, motivated and inspired the students - It was a good strategy to start with a task about the students own communities - The project work has been important, good that it was related to the Park and that the students did their own choices of target group etc - The reading list has been good as well as the screen lectures - The project plan has been essential in the course

Reflections from 2 teachers; Not so good The work load are much to heavy ( the proportion between input (workload) and output (examined studs) are unbalanced There is a need of a more clear evaluation guide The assessor guide needs to be improved, the content of the tasks should be integrated in the guide Number of drop-outs

Reflections from 2 teachers; Improvements Lot of activities around the triggers, but this is not seen in the assignments. Seems like the triggers live their own life Photovoice , AI and triggers should be integrated better in the tasks Use peer assessment in 10 % of the tasks? The project plan was a good task, but it didn´t work well with the sheet The preparation due to the role-play

Reflections from 6 students; Positive experiences The cooperation among students; learn from each other, eye-opener, good discussions, broadening views, perspectives and values The structure of the course has been good, for one it was good to make the time-plan from the beginning Good to relate community to their own communities and also to make the practice visual by use of the Park New theories; bottom-up , appreciative inquiry and project work as examples The knowledge has increase (enormously) Empowering clients and human rights (one of the practicians says this become a good tool in her reg.job) Another way of thinking To get to develope a project plan gave good experiences

Reflections from 6 students; One interesting comment one student says she has become better in listening to others and more aware of others perspective The course have opend my eyes for different litterture than I usually read for my courses. It have learnt me to see people as people, we are all different but also all alike, we are all human beings. One thing that has been an eyeopener are that I have been really sceptical to things like on line dating becourse I was a beliver of meeting people in real life to get to know them. I know now that this isn´t true. On line you are forced to be more personal becourse you can´t hide behind a fasad.

Reflections from 6 students; Problems Hard to organise meetings Complicated to work or be on internship beside the course The English skills among teachers and fellow students Lack of feed-back, the triggers didn´t trigg, to small groups according to the group-work in exam (one student) Another student says it is to many internet tools (in the survey, most of the respondents (12))

The overall impression The students who fulfilled the course seems to be very positive, They have got new knowledge from the readings in the course, from the lectures as well as from the cooperation among students. The feed-back from teachers has been appreciated. The use of the Park has been a way to connect theories with Practice and the work on a project plan has been enrichening for the course. There is a need of improvements, which is one important point with A pilot course, this is about the number of tasks and spread some task more over time. Maybe the triggers should be used in another way. Better Preparation before role-play and maybe another way to create groups