“Virtual Village” Helps UB Social-Work Students Learn To Solve Neighborhood Problems

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Students in the Graduate School of Social Work at the University at Buffalo are hitting the streets of several urban neighborhoods this semester as they take a close look at issues faced by Buffalo communities. And they'll only have to look as far as their PCs to do it.

That's because students are pounding virtual pavement, not the real thing.

The "Virtual Village" is the brainchild of Kathleen A. Kost, assistant professor and chair of community concentration in the School of Social Work.

According to Kost, the notion of a Virtual Village as part of the school's Integrative Seminar in Community course -- the follow-up course to Advanced Policy Development and Analysis, and typically a student's final class in the master's-degree program -- seemed to add a fresh dimension.

The course, she says, aims to integrate the students' research skills learned in the previous semester with an understanding of policies and programs. Prior to the village's inception, the course centered on classroom discussion about field placements and other courses.

"I was prompted by my own frustration with the dryness of the course," says Kost, who created the community concentration in the fall of 1995. "I felt the integrative seminar could be much more dynamic."

The aim of the village, she explains, is to enable students "to learn how to develop political sensitivity to assist communities" once they're in the field. As part of their preparation, students complete a mock needs-assessment of a particular community listed on the site. The Virtual Village houses several Buffalo neighborhoods -- Hertel and Riverside, Bailey and Kensington, Massachusetts near the Butler-Mitchell Boys Club, Normal Avenue near School No. 77, Genesee and Broadway, and Broadway and Stanislaus -- to which students randomly are assigned to conduct their mock needs-assessment.

The Virtual Village Web site, which can be accessed at http://www.socialwork.buffalo.edu/fas/kost/virtualvillage, allows users to click on neighborhood links to view actual images of the neighborhoods, as well as to log on for assignments. The photographs show not just what is wrong with the neighborhood, but what is positive about the area as well, Kost says.

"I wanted them to see what it's like for people who live there," she says, adding that photos were taken of the environment because she did not want her students to associate certain groups of people with particular neighborhoods.

The photos capture trash on the street, boarded-up businesses, graffiti, potholes and homes bearing criminal-negligence notices, such as "Gas off." The photos also take in the neighborhood parks, homes inhabited by residents and schools and churches.

"What we know about these neighborhoods is that there are repeated crises," she says. "There is no issue that (students) should not be concerned about."

Students, in groups of three or four people, form an imaginary community-based agency. Each student is assigned two problems to solve individually. Group members also are given one problem that they are expected to solve as a collective. The site is set up so students can log on and randomly are assigned their "problems." The fact that students are assigned, rather than choose, certain issues or problems is indicative of the real world, Kost says.

"An agency doesn't get to selectively choose an issue in isolation," she says, while some problems -- such as the roof of a church collapsing under the weight of snow, an example used on the site -- arise spontaneously. Students are expected to develop a realistic intervention, "one that has to be politically and economically feasible," she says.

The assignment, Kost says, encourages students to create task forces and resident focus groups, as well as to create a mock survey for residents, while never putting students in direct contact with the residents.

"That is where they must start," she says. "What we see as problems as outsiders is not often what the residents want addressed. We can't advocate for what the people don't want us to."

She points out that the reason behind keeping students out of the "real" neighborhoods is that effecting change takes time.

"Change takes years," she says. "There's constant commitment and development to that change. The condition took so long to get there to begin with, reversing deterioration takes time.

"I don't want (students) to have any misconceptions," she says.