Engaging with CE

More than 25 ASWB members joined the most recent Engaging with ASWB Zoom conversation on April 15. Focused on continuing education, the meeting was facilitated by ASWB Senior Director of Member Engagement and Regulatory Services Jennifer Henkel.

Henkel led the group through a spirited 90-minute discussion that touched on almost every aspect of continuing education. The participants, a mixture of social work board members, administrators, and registrars, jumped in with observations about how CE is delivered, how licensees account for their CE, and the overall value of continuing education.

The consensus among the group is that while the continuing education model may be imperfect, CE is here to stay. “I don’t think CE is going away across professions,” Henkel said, referring to semiannual meetings ASWB holds with other CE accrediting organizations from other professions. “If anything, I believe it’s going to become more and more professionalized and more scientific in terms of having some outcome measures, having more research done.”

The next Engaging with ASWB session will be held June 17, 2021, from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. EDT. ASWB members can sign up for any of the sessions remaining in this series.

Engaging thoughts on continuing education

I'm for what accomplishes learning. ... Is there a difference between online learning and in-the-seat learning when it comes to continuing education?

[CE] is another regulatory control. If you can't manage to hit the CE benchmarks that the state has outlined, then what other things about your practice aren't occurring?

There are two separate pieces that need to be addressed in continuing ed: One is knowledge transfer and the other is skill development. They're not the same thing.

At the end of the day, probably the most important driving factor in all of this is the licensee's level of motivation and engagement and professional judgment.

We really rely on ... ASWB's ACE program. We did preapprovals and then we learned that we did not have the staff or the time enough to actually look at all the courses [that were offered].

It's not so much the content and quality of their activities we're assessing but their reflective and intentional process.