The Use of an Online Diversity Forum to Facilitate Social Work Students' Dialogue on Sensitive Issues: A Quasi-Experimental Design

Abstract

While training social work students to become culturally competent practitioners is at the forefront of multicultural higher education, courses on diversity issues present great challenges for both students and faculty. Building on previous research, this study presents an instructional approach to promote social work graduate student learning via an online diversity forum (ODF). A nonequivalent, quasi-experimental comparison design assessed whether students using an asynchronous ODF as an adjunct to in-class discussions of social work diversity issues would report higher levels of diversity values, skills, and knowledge than students in the same course without access to the ODF as part of their diversity course. Findings reveal that students' self-rated gains in course outcomes were influenced not by whether or not students used the ODF, but by how they used it. Overall, social work students' involvement in an ODF can influence to what degree students report that the course enables them to gain the knowledge, skills, and values crucial to culturally competent practice. Future studies could continue to explore the efficacy of using an instructional technology such as ODF to extend multicultural education learning experiences for social work students beyond the time and space of the classroom.

KEYWORDS:

• instructional technology
• diversity
• multicultural education
• quasi-experimental design
• cultural competence

The authors would like to thank Ms. Margaret Madigan for her assistance in this research.