E-Learning and Social Work Education during COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has induced changes in the regular patterns of social interaction, causing the need for new approaches to teaching social work. This work aims to examine the features, opportunities, and prospects of implementing e-learning in Social Work Education. The study recruited 116 students from [anonymized for blind peer review] University and 109 students from [anonymized for blind peer review] University. All participants were asked to complete online questionnaires with the view of assessing their perceptions of e-learning. The study uses a structural analysis of the content of academic research in the field of online education in social work to create a questionnaire for surveying students. Based on the results of the descriptive statistics of a students’ survey and the intersection with the study of the corresponding corpus of academic research, a Conceptual model of e-learning in Social Work Education is proposed, which integrates the available academic findings and the real situation estimation in accordance with the assessment of students. Findings suggest that e-learning as a tool for teaching is a promising alternative to traditional classroom or blended learning. The effectiveness of e-learning in social work was highlighted.