This article shares a case study of an award-winning faculty and staff training series. During AY2018–19, the Columbia University School of Social Work (CSSW) Online Campus launched a five-session virtual Annual Online Faculty Development Series, which recently completed its fifth year. Each year, the series includes five highly interactive 2-hour synchronous sessions. The sessions serve as a forum to share CSSW and Online Campus news and updates, build community, get to know CSSW deans and directors via guest visits, demonstrate and discuss best practices for online teaching, update the community on recent technology developments, and learn from guest presentations about innovations in online education and the field of social work.

Students whose educational and personal development as 16–18-year-olds was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the associated isolation, and alternative assessments are having to adapt to the challenges of higher education. Our peer-assisted learning (PAL) scheme encourages engagement and aims to overcome the stigma of asking for help and struggling alone. PAL not only supports academic development but also has a social aspect. PAL attendees typically want to push boundaries and get the most from their degree. Often the same students attend each week, so friendships begin. Social connections and positivity are good for well-being. A STEM career has particular characteristics, being team oriented. PAL promotes collaboration and communication, which encourages social confidence and more articulate interactions with others, which boost well-being. For many, the industrial placement year within the degree is their first proper job, but the application process, including being rejected, is stressful. PAL leaders, having recent similar experiences, prepare students to be more resilient for this challenge.

Over half of all social work educators in the United States are adjunct or part-time instructors. Social workers who take on adjunct teaching roles value the experience, which offers personal and professional rewards. As administrators in social work programs, both authors have hired and trained social workers to serve as adjuncts in bachelor’s and master’s social work programs in different geographical areas of the U.S. However, in these roles, we have noted that many social workers interested in becoming adjunct instructors often do not know how to start the process or what is needed. This article aims to provide practical information for social work practitioners about how to become and serve as adjunct instructors for a social work education program.

The online course focused on teaching students how to design and implement innovative learning programs to enhance professional development for human services employees. Live online classes carry a high risk of students disengaging due to the multiple distractions available online. A key element of the strategy was to partner closely to create an environment that supported animated discussions and stimulating content exploration. Coteaching offered certain advantages. Effective discussions take place in an environment in which students feel safe enough to take risks and share their thoughts, ideas, questions, and concerns about the content. Many students expressed their appreciation for the coteaching style. They enjoyed the interactions around the material, conversational yet respectful tone, the transparent sharing of workplace experiences, and the occasional informal banter. They pointed out that this unique style both modeled and communicated a powerful invitation to join in on the discussion.

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 resulted in major disruption for social work education, as many teachers and programs shifted from on-campus classes to remote or blended teaching using digital technologies. Social work educators have an opportunity to apply the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic to meet the needs of students and communities in ways that are grounded in our professional values. Due to the pandemic, many students and faculty were learning and teaching via online education for the first time and managing personal and community trauma. The purpose of this article is to provide social work educators with a practical, theory-informed approach that supports an unexpected switch to crisis teaching in times of extended crisis, to maintain quality education, and move toward best practices gleaned from trauma-informed approaches. We describe theoretical frameworks that can inform educational practices and decision making in times of disruption. Then we offer trauma-informed teaching and learning principles and technology-mediated strategies for best practices in crisis course design and delivery. We share practical strategies for the delivery of social work education that are especially needed in times of disruption.

Skilled technical support is essential to enable webinars, synchronous online classes, and other live online events to run smoothly. Having a tech support professional dedicated to preventing and troubleshooting technology issues allows presenters to focus on the substance of online events. This article shares an example of an interactive online training program that develops the technical skills and expertise needed to support live online events hosted on web conferencing platforms. The program, called the Institute on Technical Skills for Online Event Production, blends asynchronous homework and synchronous classes in an intensive, hands-on format. Run by Columbia University School of Social Work’s Online Campus, this Institute trains social workers to become technical support specialists for online courses and events, and the approach is replicable across academic disciplines and for workplaces.

In our roles as adjunct faculty and full time higher education administrators managing an online program, the two authors were already using Trauma Informed Teaching and Learning (TITL) practices in our own classrooms and training and mentoring faculty on the use of TITL practices as well. However, as a result of the pandemic, we both found that our use of trauma-informed teaching and learning practices significantly increased, particularly our compassion, collaboration with students, and flexibility with assignment deadlines. In this essay, we reflect on our individualized experiences as adjunct faculty, one teaching during the first semester of the pandemic in March-May and the other teaching during the second semester of the pandemic in May-July. Because of the collective trauma and distress of the pandemic, we gained a new perspective on a practice we believed in -- we reconceptualized TITL practices as much more fundamental to teaching, both now and in the long term.

During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Columbia University's School of Social Work created a webinar series to support faculty who had to quickly transition to online teaching without prior e-learning experience. The award-winning series was freely open to all faculty anywhere, and shared the School's expertise from running a high quality online master's degree program and intensive online faculty training institute. This article describes the series' goals, planning, logistics, sessions, and impact.