Supporting Child Welfare Traineeship Students through an Online Peer Network
This article describes the implementation of a peer network for social work traineeship students pursuing or continuing careers in child welfare. Literature on the best principles and practices for online community building reviewed and an explanation of how these best practices were utilized to build the online community is provided. Initial program design is described as well as program developments that occurred over four years of the program. The article then examines how the program’s evaluation was carried out and reviews some of the evaluation data. The article concludes with a discussion about the successes and challenges experienced in building the peer network and how other social work or traineeship programs, or agencies, might use an online peer network to support social work students and professionals.
From Virtual Strangers to a Cohesive Learning Community: The Evolution of Online Group Development
Instruc tors who teac h in online learning environments have the unique opportunity to enhanc e the interac tion of their students through an online threaded disc ussion board. With effec tive planning and skillful fac ilitat ion tec hniques, this venue for posting messages c an be used as a resourc e to engage learners in bec oming an interac tive and c ohesive learning c ommunity. This c ase study c entered on part ic ipants enrolled in a web-based, graduate level professional development c ourse for educ ators at a large midwestern university. Using the c onstant c omparative method of analysis, the researc hers analyzed threaded disc ussion board transc ripts, interviews with the instruc tors, and formative and summative c ourse evaluations to c ode for themes and c ategories from whic h emerged a model for stages of online group development. Init ially “virtual” strangers, part ic ipants bec ame an interac tive and c ohesive learning c ommunity by the end of the five-week c ourse. Five stages of online group development are identified: (a) Introduc tion, (b) Identific at ion, (c ) Interac tion, (d) Involvement, and (e) Inquiry. These stages provide implic ations for teac hing and learning online.
Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist
This classic is the benchmark against which all modern books about Nietzsche are measured. When Walter Kaufmann wrote it in the immediate aftermath of World War II, most scholars outside Germany viewed Nietzsche as part madman, part proto-Nazi, and almost wholly unphilosophical. Kaufmann rehabilitated Nietzsche nearly single-handedly, presenting his works as one of the great achievements of Western philosophy. Responding to the powerful myths and countermyths that had sprung up around Nietzsche, Kaufmann offered a patient, evenhanded account of his life and works, and of the uses and abuses to which subsequent generations had put his ideas.Without ignoring or downplaying the ugliness of many of Nietzsche's proclamations, he set them in the context of his work as a whole and of the counterexamples yielded by a responsible reading of his books. More positively, he presented Nietzsche's ideas about power as one of the great accomplishments of modern philosophy, arguing that his conception of the "will to power" was not a crude apology for ruthless self-assertion but must be linked to Nietzsche's equally profound ideas about sublimation.He also presented Nietzsche as a pioneer of modern psychology and argued that a key to understanding his overall philosophy is to see it as a reaction against Christianity. Many scholars in the past half century have taken issue with some of Kaufmann's interpretations, but the book ranks as one of the most influential accounts ever written of any major Western thinker.