SOWK 699 – Global/Local Community-Based Participatory Research
Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) is a partnership between researchers and community that builds on community strengths and resources to generate questions that are suitable for research, fosters co-learning with the community, seeks to recognize the power-sharing process and address inequities as they occur, and aims to make a long-term commitment to the community relationships formed and ongoing work on the community generated concerns. CBPR is well-recognized, exciting, dynamic and mirrors community complexity. This approach considers current pressures on systems like COVID-19 responses.
Students enrolled in this course will learn the basics of the CBPR model with a particular focus on where multi-disciplined research plays a role. Readings and videos will point out where CBPR models have been successful in public health and beyond, and students will unpack the “how” of the projects. Students will consider their own field placements or other organizations they are partnered with to craft a project proposal around a community issue for the final paper. There are no exams.
Since it is key that students learn the CBPR model so that they can teach it to others, from January through March the focus will be on learning about the history, components, ethics, and challenges of this model. After Spring Break, we will engage with graduate students in Thailand enrolled at Prince Songkla University, through a model known as Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL). COIL is a program based out of SUNY Albany (coil.suny.edu) that enhances intercultural student interaction through proven approaches to meaningful online engagement between university partners. Students in the CBPR course will create powerpoints to teach the Thai students what they have learned about CBPR in the preceding weeks. Thai students in turn will present to us about their understanding of CBPR and how they might use it in communities in Thailand. Presenting in English is a goal of the course they will be taking. A final project proposal will be the outcome of the course.
This is an asynchronous course with 4 required synchronous online sessions on Tuesday evenings from 8-9pm on the following dates: 2/7, 3/8, 3/29, 4/26
For more information about this new elective course, please contact Dr. Debbie Gioia at dgioia@ssw.umaryland.edu