Although it may not be too unusual for students to complete an internship abroad, there’s one small catch when social work students try to do that for their practicum – they are required to report to class once a week.
But Amanda Luzsicza ’12, and Pam Clary, her instructor and coordinator of the practicum program, found a way around the distance issue. Amanda completed her social work practicum in Warsaw, Poland this past spring and graduated from Missouri Western in May, because Pam was willing to figure out a way to make it work. Thanks to Skype (a service that allows users to communicate by voice, video, and instant message over the Internet), Amanda was “present” for every class.
“That’s what social workers do,” Pam said. “We’re all about thinking outside the box and asking, ‘How can we do things better?’”
Last fall, Amanda, who was getting ready to complete her last semester as a social work major the following spring with a 456-hour practicum, found out her husband, Frank ’99, was being transferred to Warsaw for a temporary assignment. “I went into panic mode when I found out. I ran to my professors and they were totally supportive,” she said.
Amanda was hired for her practicum by the European Academy of Diplomacy, and Pam set it up so Amanda could be Skyped in for not only her seminar class, but also a research class with Dr. Ali Kamali, another required course in the program. Pam said they set their chairs in a circle in her class and attached the camera to the back of one of the chairs. They would move the camera around so Amanda could view whoever was speaking.
The two class times were back-to-back and met once a week at the start of the semester. Because of the time difference, Amanda would go online at 5 p.m., and sometimes be on until 11 p.m., with an hour break. Later in the semester, she met individually with Ali, via Skype.
Amanda said she appreciated that she could Skype with Pam even outside of class hours. “If I ever just need to talk, she was there. I can’t stress enough how supportive the professors were.”
Pam is convinced Skyping could work for students in a variety of situations, not just those abroad. There have been students who completed practicums more than an hour away, she said, and Skyping would have saved them from driving in to campus every week.
Pam presented, “The Skype’s the Limit: An Innovative Teaching Technique That Supports Students in their Field Education Settings,” at a national conference for the Association of Baccalaureate Social Work Program Directors in Portland, Ore., this past spring. She said it was well received by the conference’s attendees.
Advancing technology, Pam said, is the “new normal,” and universities need to embrace it and make it work for them. “We need to have options for our students.”
Because they were on the internet, Pam said she and her students had to be very careful in the class to protect the confidentiality of the students’ experiences with clients and personnel.
Amanda said her time in Poland was a wonderful experience for her and her husband and their son, and after the practicum, she volunteered for the Academy until they returned to the United States.
“I went across the world and the professors still involved me. Skyping in I still felt like I was a part of the school,” Amanda said.