Professor Mark Hughes

Internationally, and in Australia, inter-professional learning (IPL), collaboration and teamwork are becoming essential in health care delivery and are core to delivering patient-centred care (World Health Organisation [WHO], 2010). Education programs to train workforce capacity in key aspects of inter-professional practice, including teamwork and collaboration skills, are required to meet future health care demands (WHO, 2010). The proposed initiative supports IPL, enabling students to approach community wellbeing from different professional lenses, providing the opportunity to work with and within the community to support wellbeing.

This presentation will describe a sustainable and scalable model of IPL based on co-design principles with industry. Our industry partners have previously identified gaps in new graduates’ skills that are needed for work readiness. These are often the soft skills, including governance, leadership, communication, and teamwork. The model involves inter-professional teams of students and academics from across the university collectively working with industry to develop innovative solutions to support industry identified issues.

In addition to strengthening industry partnerships, this model offers specific institutional opportunities including the increase in non-traditional placements and promotion of the University’s reputation for its enthusiasm for producing job-ready graduates. Students will be provided with opportunities for community-engaged learning in ways that value and respect them as partners in the learning process, as members of the University's academic community, and as ambassadors to the wider world.

A short video will demonstrate the mutual benefits of a 6-week IPL placement in aged care. We will also demonstrate how students develop an understanding of the broad scope of work in aged care and the career opportunities within the sector.

Australian Government Department of Health. (2018). A matter of care Australia’s aged care workforce strategy taskforce. https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/a-matter-of-care-australia-s-aged-care-workforce-strategy.pdf

World Health Organization. (2010). Framework for action on interprofessional education & collaborative practice.

The online technology, Pebble+ was recently embedded in the curriculum of the new Master of Social Work (Professional Qualifying) degree. This technology addresses two purposes. First, it provides each student with a personalised online learning environment where they can access and interact with course material, from which they create their own resources (known as assets) to facilitate their learning and demonstrate their emerging capabilities in social work. Second, it allows students to generate an electronic portfolio from the assets created, for presentation to potential field supervisors and employers. This presentation overviews the evaluation framework developed to research the implementation of this new initiative. The framework is based on our social constructivist pedagogy, which informs the whole curriculum. The evaluation research questions include: How effectively does the approach support student development of critical reflective practice and practice wisdom? How effectively does the approach enable students to better recognise and articulate what they know and what they can do as emerging social workers?

Background and purpose: While loneliness continues to be identified as a concern for some lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) older people, there is also substantial evidence of the diverse sources of support that many LGBTI people access from both biological families and ‘families of choice’. This presentation reports on research that examined LGBTI seniors’ experiences of loneliness, and their reflection on support gained from both family members and friends, including their perception of who would be there for them in a crisis. Methods: The research involved delivery of an online and paper-based survey, which comprised both closed and open-ended questions. A series of standardised instruments were also employed, including the Three-Item Loneliness Scale, reported on in this presentation. As of October 2013, the study had recruited 309 self-identifying LGBTI people, aged 50 years or over, who resided in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Data were analysed via quantitative statistics and thematic qualitative analysis.

Results: As of October 2013, approximately 48% of respondents said that they lacked companionship some of the time or often, 49% that they felt left out some of the time or often, and 53% that they felt isolated from others some of the time or often. Respondents identified a wide range of supports that they felt they could draw upon in times of crisis, including partners, biological family members and both LGBTI and non-LGBTI friends. They also identified a series of formal and informal social groups and activities of which they make use.

Conclusions: Effective social work practice with LGBTI seniors requires a good understanding of the diverse sources of support that people draw upon, as well as of experiences of isolation and loneliness. Barriers to support are considered, along with strategies to address these barriers.

This presentation examines the rationale for embedding the online technology, Pebble+, in the curriculum of a new Master of Social Work (Professional Qualifying) degree in Australia. This technology has been adopted for two purposes. First, it provides each student with a personalised online learning environment, where they can access and interact with course material, as well as create their own resources (known as assets) to facilitate their learning and demonstrate their emerging capabilities in social work. Second, the technology is used to generate an electronic portfolio, drawing on the assets students have created, for presentation to potential field supervisors and employers. In applying social constructivist pedagogy, the presentation highlights the potential of this technology in supporting the development of critical reflective practice and practice wisdom, as well enabling students to better recognise and articulate what they know and what they can do as emerging social workers. The presentation includes a demonstration of how the technology is used, and a reflection on the challenges involved in the implementation of the initiative, which included overcoming some technical difficulties and dispelling anxieties about using online technology.

This presentation examines the rationale for embedding the recently released, online technology, Pebble+, in the curriculum of a new Master of Social Work (Professional Qualifying) degree in Australia. This technology has been adopted for two purposes. First, it provides each student with a personalised online learning environment, where they can access and interact with the bulk of the distance education course material, as well as create their own resources (known as assets) to facilitate their learning and demonstrate their emerging capabilities in social work. Second, the technology is used to generate an electronic portfolio, drawing on the assets students have created, for presentation to potential field supervisors and employers. The benefits of using portfolios, and now electronic portfolios, have been well recognised in social work education (Fitch et al., 2008; Graham & Megarry, 2005; Rosegrant Alvarez & Moxley, 2004). Yet as technology advances, their potential outstrips the initial, relatively modest goals, of producing summative documents. This presentation contributes to the literature by arguing that Pebble+ provides even greater opportunities than its forerunner, PebblePad (as evaluated by Halstead & Wheeler, 2009), for supporting a social constructivist pedagogy and facilitating critically reflective and deep-level learning. The presentation includes a demonstration of how the technology is used, and a reflection on the challenges involved in the implementation of the initiative, which included overcoming some technical difficulties and dispelling anxieties about using online technology.