Principal Investigator: Philip Ouellette, Associate Professor, School of Social Work
Co-investigator: Kathy Lay, Associate Professor, School of Social Work
Project Title: Online MSW Degree Program
Funding Level: $15,000
Abstract:
Potential social work graduate students often must maintain their employment while at the same time manage multiple family responsibilities. As a result, enrolling in traditional full-time, on-campus, graduate level social work programs is impossible for some very promising potential students. Participation in part-time programs can also be prohibitive because of travel and displacement costs on evenings and weekends. This is a growing reality for many students, not only in Indiana, but across the country. The Indiana University School of Social Work (IUSSW) needs to develop alternative educational strategies that will allow these students to become professional graduate level social work practitioners and also generate new revenue streams for the School.
The IUSSW faculty is developing a curriculum that transforms the School’s regular MSW degree program to an equivalent online Web-based delivery format. Courses will be transformed, students will be recruited, and faculty resources will be identified and developed. The program will be designed to allow students to enroll in the program four times a year, without the requirements of a cohort at the program level except for minimum student enrollment in a given course to ensure program viability. The online program will begin instruction on January 9, 2012.
This Curriculum Enhancement Grant will support our efforts in transferring and converting our current immersion, foundation, and intermediate curriculum courses into a viable online format. We are requesting support for underwriting faculty salaries and also for establishing a development studio in the School to create teaching resources.
