Building collaborative capacity for using and evaluating the impact of e-learning in social work education: the case of law

This article reports on a learning set designed to support educators teaching law to social work students to build their capacity, first, for engaging with e-learning resources and, second, for evaluating the outcomes of their use in teaching. A mixed methods approach was used to track the process of capacity building, including recording and transcription of the content of seven learning set meetings over 2½ years, repeat measures questionnaires to capture changes in attitudes and orientation to the use of e-learning, reflective diaries, and individual interviews with each of the learning set members. The findings demonstrate increased self-perceived capacity, both in blending e-learning into teaching and in researching the outcomes. Participation was experienced as a constructive and empowering experience. The learning set enabled social work law teaching to evolve over the 2 years, e-learning becoming more embedded in the curriculum. There were positive changes in attitudes, motivators and barriers to the use of e-learning, and in orientation to the use of IT in education, resulting in improved confidence. Similarly, understanding of, and the ability to apply, evaluation techniques that could track changes in student learning improved throughout the project, confirming the collaborative capacity building value of the learning set approach.