Beyond Skills Training: Teaching Social Work 'Rituals' Through Large Language Model (LLM) Simulated Role-Play

超越技能訓練：運用大型語言模型模擬角色扮演來教導社會工作之“專業儀式”

Dr. Gerard Chung

Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore, Singapore新加坡國立大學社會工作系助理教授

Abstract: This session addresses a critical question for social work educators: How can we use AI-powered role-playing tools without reducing professional practice to isolated technical skills? We present SWAT RolePlay, a text-based simulation tool where students engage with AI-simulated service users. While these tools offer clear advantages such as unlimited practice opportunities, immediate feedback, and reduced performance anxiety, our student testing revealed an important limitation: the absence of the relational and embodied dimensions essential to social work practice. Drawing on our experience with social work students in Singapore, we propose "ritualizing the machine" through intentional design principles that develop students' "ritual fluency", their ability to navigate complete client encounters with appropriate relational and contextual responsiveness. This talk presents practical strategies that help educators use AI tools while maintaining the holistic nature of professional training in digital learning environment.

Bio: Dr. Gerard Chung is an assistant professor of Social Work at the National University of Singapore, researching on technology in social work. As a social work researcher, my research focuses on parenting, fathers, family services in the community, and intervention research. I am also interested to advance the use of administrative data in the social service sector to improve social work practices and to evaluate interventions and services. I identify as a quantitative methodologist where the through line connecting my research interests involved the use of computational social science methods and advanced statistical methods. I am most interested to use text-as-data methods to explore insights from open-survey responses and textual data generated from unconventional sources. I also hold an adjunct research fellow position at the Social Service Research Centre at the National University of Singapore. I previously worked as a social worker at Fei Yue Family Service Centre.