2023 Conference Objects and Presentations (Communicative Events)

Virtual networking & discussion: Anti-racist pedagogical strategies for online social work education

Marquart, Matthea S.; Marshall, Lia W.

These are the slides from a session for the 2023 Social Work Distance Education Conference #SWDE2023.

Session description:
We invite our colleagues to an interactive virtual networking session and conversation on the theme of pedagogical approaches that promote anti-racism in synchronous online courses. Anti-racism is an element of human rights that has global applications, as students and faculty join online courses from around the world, international students participate in U.S.-based online programs, and the social work profession takes on global challenges with a social justice perspective.

Our goal for this virtual networking session is to host a conversation that will enhance peer learning and support as we all strive to move toward anti-racist online social work classrooms globally that help prepare students to become anti-racist social workers.

The Online Campus at Columbia’s School of Social Work (CSSW) has been discussing anti-racist approaches to online education for several years. As Ibram X. Khendi writes in How to Be An Antiracist, Chapter 1, “anti-racist” is a verb, not a permanent label, and “Like fighting an addiction, being an antiracist requires persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular self-examination.” Therefore, throughout our faculty development, we have devoted time to discussions of concrete ways to make classrooms inclusive.

For this virtual networking session, we propose to share a handout (Marquart et al, 2022) that will spark conversation and sharing of additional concrete strategies, questions, and challenges around implementing anti-racist teaching in synchronous online courses. We will begin the session with a brief review of the handout, and then open up the discussion, asking guided questions as needed.

Our handout will include practical steps and considerations that have been shared during dozens of group conversations during online faculty development sessions, and will include the ideas and voices of adjunct and full time instructors, TAs, technical support, and administrators. By sharing advice and tips drawn from a community of online educators, this handout will embody an approach to knowledge generation that challenges the white supremacy culture characteristic of individualism (Okun, n.d.).

The handout discussed in this session, Anti-racist pedagogical considerations and strategies for synchronous online courses, can be found here: https://doi.org/10.7916/zm02-6d52