Abstract: Submission #248

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented disruptions to higher education globally, with Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) in social work education among the most affected. Traditionally grounded in face-to-face engagement, social work WIL rapidly shifted to online platforms, raising complex challenges for competency development in a practice-based profession. This presentation draws from a critical review of both international and South African literature to examine how universities navigated this transition. While global studies highlighted shared challenges such as digital inequality, reduced interpersonal engagement, and complexities in assessing practical skills remotely, the South African context revealed additional barriers, including infrastructural disparities, socio-economic inequalities, and digital exclusion. Despite these challenges, the pandemic also accelerated digital transformation in social work education, offering opportunities for flexible, innovative, and blended WIL models. Findings revealed a significant gap in South African research on online WIL in social work, particularly in capturing the experiences of students, lecturers, and supervisors. The paper concludes by advocating for contextually grounded, ethically responsible, and inclusive online WIL guidelines that balance digital innovation with the relational ethos of social work, offering lessons for both South African and global higher education landscapes.