Fieldwork in the Times of COVID–19: A Case Study

Abstract

The COVID–19 pandemic, subsequent lockdowns and protocols with social distancing policies impacted social work education, especially fieldwork globally. Students and fieldwork supervisors had to find alternate solutions for direct face–to–face fieldwork practise and supervision. Moving from face–to–face settings to virtual platforms overnight was not easy; it required supervisors to adapt to remote activities, change learning plans, shift to virtual supervision, formulate different parameters to evaluate the students; and the students to demonstrate satisfactory levels of practise.

The article is a case study of the learners enrolled in the Master of Social Work (MSW) open and distance learning (ODL) programme of the Indira Gandhi National Open University and explores the challenges faced by them vis–à–vis fieldwork practise in social work, the scope and opportunities of fieldwork during COVID–19, and the implementation of fieldwork activities digitally. This article is based on data collected through the use of Google Forms amongst the 253 students enrolled in the MSW programme to understand the fieldwork activities carried out by them and the challenges they faced during the pandemic. The results obtained depict the changes made, the new activities the learners engaged themselves in, and the difficulties they faced in executing the new fieldwork activities whilst under nation–wide lockdowns. Furthermore, changes introduced in the fieldwork practicum of the MSW programme have also been depicted in the article.