How social work academics are using social media to support student learning

This report has been produced by Shirley Ayres on behalf of the Higher Education Academy Social Work and Social Policy discipline.

The use of social media for academic teaching has an increasingly important role in education and learning and enables people to collaborate, build relationships and share information and resources. Social learning acknowledges that people learn within a social context. Academics have an important role in ensuring that student social workers, like many professionals, have an appropriate online presence while remaining alive to the potential benefits of engaging though social media for practice educators, service users and carers.

This survey was undertaken to build a picture about the use and attitudes towards using social networking to support social work education and learning and to identify where additional training and support is needed.

The findings of this survey are based on the responses of 29 social work academics working in 19 UK universities and three US universities. 80% of respondents were involved in both qualifying and post-qualifying social work education.