Faculty Community Building in Virtual Social Work Education

Background and Objectives

Virtual education represents a paradigm shift in Social Work, with students, educators and administrators establishing new roles and responsibilities in an environment that is no longer grounded in a static location. Faculty are tasked with not only developing new ways to engage and instruct virtual students, but also to engage and collaborate with colleagues living in diverse locations. Given our profession’s emphasis on understanding the person-in-environment, it is essential to consider faculty experiences as employees in virtual work environments. The objective of this research is to explore the perspectives and experiences of instructors teaching in the University of Southern California’s Virtual Academic Center.

Methods

An exploratory, qualitative research design was applied. Non-probability purposive and quota sampling techniques constructed a frame of 48 participants representing tenure faculty, clinical instructors, field and adjunct lecturers. Electronic recruitment resulted in a response rate of 69% (N=33) and the completion of 25 semi-structured telephone interviews. 

Transcribed interviews were uploaded into NVivo10 for thematic analysis. Open coding of the first thirteen interviews resulted in thematic saturation and a 51-item codebook. Initial codes were collapsed into 21 codes to guide the analysis of the remaining 12 interviews, resulting in two themes relating to faculty relationships.  

Results

Of the 25 participants, 84% identified as female and 68% as White. Thirty-six percent are in their 60s, 28% in their 50s, 28% in their 40s and 8% in their 30s. Twenty percent of those interviewed are tenure line faculty, 40% adjunct instructors, 32% clinical teaching faculty and 8% field faculty. The sample reports a mean of 14 years of teaching experience (range is 1 to over 30 years).

Theme 1: The Challenge of Geographic Diversity: While faculty view geographic diversity in the student body enthusiastically, many participants lamented that geographic diversity within faculty presents complicated barriers for fostering connections and getting to know each other.   

Theme 2: Community Building Among Faculty: Respondents reported experiencing disconnect between themselves and other faculty, regardless of the campus. Building a shared identity and creating community was viewed as important to most participants. A large faculty, lack of informal communication opportunities and few formal or informal avenues for collaboration were cited as challenges.

Conclusions and Implications

This research suggests a dissonance in the way that geographic diversity is experienced in virtual learning environments. While all respondents applauded the unique element that geography brings to the classroom, few identified the opportunities that virtual education brings to universities for recruiting faculty with diverse interests, expertise and experiences. Alienation from other faculty and campuses were raised as important concerns among faculty, with geography identified as one of the greatest barriers for community building.

To build robust and sustainable virtual social work education communities, it is essential to consider faculty perspectives and experiences. This research suggests that attention be given to the many strengths of having a geographically robust faculty. Furthermore, institutional opportunities for networking and community-building among distant faculty should be developed and tested to build cohesion and best practices for virtual faculty engagement.