Introduction

The Office for Practicum Education recently created a project to develop a short, simulated client interaction that focuses on supporting social work communication skills. This is an innovative approach using an online platform and client avatar. The tool that is being used is called  the Dialogue Trainer. The goal for this project is to support your initial social work communication skill attainment. It is the hope that it might help increase feelings of preparedness for your first day of interacting with clients in field.

You are invited to play through the simulation and consider what you experience and learn. You’ll be discussing this simulated client interaction with your field seminar instructor and other new SSW students during your first field seminar. Instructions are below, with an estimated time start-to-finish of 15-40 minutes.

Part 1

Create a Dialogue Trainer account by using this link to join https://en.dialoguetrainer.app/join/LJCSHNSY (This is a pre-purchased UMB SSW account-estimated time to create account is 2-5 min)

1. • Step a: Click or copy and paste join code link into browser (Google Chrome works best)

   • Step b: Create an account using your University of Maryland email address

   • Step c: An activation email from DialogueTrainer will be sent to your email. Follow instructions as indicated in activation email from DialogueTrainer. (Note sometimes this email goes to your SPAM folder. Please check there if it is not in your regular inbox)

   • Step d: To get a feel for how to use the tool/simulation program, you can PLAY the “Introduction to the DialogueTrainer Tool for SSW Practicum Department” simulation 

Part 2

Select the simulation titled: “Interaction with Charlie: SSW Practicum Scenario 2024” 

Part 3

Move through the scenario using your current knowledge of social work communication skills. 

• The scenario itself provides additional prompts and instructions. 

• The scenario is estimated to take 5-10 minutes for a social worker with experience, and an estimated 10-25 minutes for a newer social worker. You may replay the scenario 2 times.

• Each time the interaction ends you will see an “assessment” that provides feedback on your response choices. This is provided as a learning tool for your practice knowledge and skill development

• There is a scorecard” that indicates a “true” or “false” the social work practice phases in the simulation. A “true” indicates you successfully navigated through that part of the interaction with the client. A “false” indicates that you did not successfully navigate through that part of the interaction, or you did not have an opportunity due to client dis-engaging prior. 

For questions, concerns, or technology troubleshooting, you can contact the Office of Practicum Education or the IDEA Team using any of the links below.