Immersive technology for social work training
There are varied methods to build student graduate competencies in higher education, but an emerging method of relevance to social work given the recent global pandemic, is virtual reality (VR). Current examples of VR being applied in higher education have demonstrated promising potential as a tool used to build student graduate outcomes, including building of relevant knowledge, skills and competencies.
VR is proving to be an excellent method for developing procedural skill training, through the development of real time, realistic and immersive scenarios that closely replicate practice contexts . This approach enables students’ to develop required graduate competencies as applied to realistic practice contexts, in supported and scaffolded teaching environments, prior to doing this in direct practice (where ‘real’ people are directly affected). Further, findings have shown that VR is an effective tool to build empathy through enabling participants opportunities to engage in perspective taking.
A learning and teaching tool currently being established for the Social Work and Human Services programs at UniSQ, is three 360-degree experiences from the first-person perspective of a social work practitioner. It is anticipated that the use of VR to build social work competencies about Domestic and Family Violence (DFV) will enable social work students’ opportunities to be predisposed to DFV content in a scaffolded and supported way, prior to potentially experiencing this in direct practice (such as during student placements).
Immersive scenarios
The scenarios focus on a first-person account of social work practitioners engaged in practice settings that respond to different social intersections, including:
- Elder abuse
- Domestic and family violence of a homosexual man, and
- Domestic and family violence of a heterosexual female.
The contexts all involve scenarios that social work practitioners can encounter in practice (e.g., a hospital setting, a home visit, or a child safety investigation). To achieve authenticity, a set of storyboards and scripts have been developed, coordinated by the research lead (a registered social worker and academic) and supported by the research team. The immersive videos are currently in production and involve actors and authentic sets through which a student or trainee social worker can be placed at the centre wearing a headset or via a screen with navigation elements added.
The affiliated research conducted with the development of this resource may illuminate the preliminary effectiveness of VR as a teaching tool for DFV education; and be used to further inform the development of this innovative teaching approach in tertiary social work education. This approach ensures we implement best practice in the Australian social work curriculum.
Research team
