Concurrent panel session 2: Service learning: Linking students and community (original) (raw)
Lots of Moving Parts: Is Service-Learning Sustainable in a College Classroom?
2010
Engagement in the immediate community has long been a stated goal of most colleges and universities. Grand university mission statements (including our own) often convey a “commitment to community service.” While our rhetoric is lofty, how do we actually commit ourselves to pursuing this objective? How might we truly “engage” a community of scholars with the larger community? Is “true” service-learning sustainable in a college classroom? This paper addresses one method of engagement that exists on our campus: one section of the Core Curriculum “Human Behavior in Perspective,” has been transformed into a service-learning course. This course integrates the model of service-learning into the educational curriculum. In practical terms, this course provides interaction between college students and residents of a Rhode Island Women’s Shelter.
A Lesson in Service Learning and Community Engagement
Our service-learning course focused on a polluted and impoverished Detroit neighborhood and taught all involved with the class-students, academics, and practitioners-the powerful impact that studio immersions in communities can have on the learning outcomes for students. Through this experience, we learned that in order to make broad notions of sustainability more tangible to community residents and students, they must be enacted through the lens of localized issues.
Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 2019
As service-learning and community-based learning proliferate in higher education, increased attention has been directed toward gathering evidence of their impacts. While the bulk of the literature has focused on student outcomes, little work has been done to examine how the perspectives of stakeholder groups overlap and intersect. This study uses an exploratory qualitative design to examine the experiences of service-learning students, faculty, and community partners at a four-year public university, which revealed five key themes: the time-intensive nature of service-learning, the added value provided by the service-learning faculty member, the additional benefits created by service-learning connections, the unintended opportunities for discovery of self and others, and the impacts of the liminal space of service-learning transcending traditional academic boundaries. Implications of the study reveal the importance of institutional support and coordination to maximize impacts on stakeholders, as well as the need for further study of overlapping stakeholder perspectives in multiple contexts. Service-learning is a teaching and learning strategy that applies students' classroom learning to meet a meaningful community need, building upon John Dewey's (1938) call for a pedagogy grounded in experience that prepares students to be active members of a democratic society. Scholarship since the 1990s has recognized the rapid expansion of service-learning programs in higher education and the need for rigorous, structured assessment of the outcomes and impacts of such programs (Chupp & Joseph, 2010; Driscoll, Holland, Gelmon, & Kerrigan, 1996; Eyler, Giles, & Braxton, 1997). The past decade and a half in particular have seen the production of service-learning scholarship that answers this call with unprecedented breadth, including work by Abes, Jackson, and Jones (2002) to understand faculty motivations; Celio, Durlak, and Dymnicki's (2011) meta-analysis of student impacts; Kilgo, Ezell Sheets, and Pascarella's (2015) examination of longitudinal data on high-impact educational practices from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education; and Keen and Hall's (2009) longitudinal study of students engaged in co-curricular service-learning through 23 liberal arts colleges' Bonner Scholar Programs. This study reports assessment findings from a four-year public university located in the southern United States, with a service-learning program that officially launched in 2013. The program assessment plan established program outcomes and measures for students, faculty, and community partners; this research provides results of focus groups conducted with all three stakeholder groups in February and March 2016. Although several service-learning faculty members at the institution have conducted research related to their own servicelearning courses and pedagogy, a program-wide study was needed to report findings on outcomes and impacts on the students, faculty, and community. The primary purpose of this research, then, was to identify the outcomes of the university's service-learning program by studying the impacts on students, faculty, and community partner organizations. The following research questions were addressed: (a) How has servicelearning impacted student participants' academic performance and understanding of their discipline, cultural awareness, civic responsibility and community, and their skills in collaboration; (b) How has service-learning impacted faculty members' teaching practice, teaching philosophy, and commitment to civic engagement and community; and (c) How has service-learning impacted nonprofit community partner organizations' ability to fulfill their service missions? Literature Review The review of literature examines the impacts of service-learning on students, faculty, and community partners. Overall, research on student impacts far exceeds that on faculty and community partner impacts. Student Impacts With the implementation of service-learning widespread in higher education, evidence reveals a variety of impacts. As numerous researchers have observed (e.g., Driscoll, 2000; Vernon & Ward, 1999), the study of service-learning outcomes has focused predominantly, and perhaps appropriately, on students. Service-learning has been found to have a positive impact on academic achievement (Celio et al., 2011; Strange, 2000), critical thinking and writing skills (Vogelgesang & Astin, 2000), and attitudes toward school and learning (Celio et al., 2011). Students who participate in service-learning are better able to apply course concepts to new situations (Kendrick, 1996) and demonstrate a greater understanding of career decision-making (Coulter-Kern, Coulter-Kern, Schenkel, Walker, & Fogel, 2013), improved leadership skills (Groh, Stallwood, & Daniels, 2011), and a greater desire for their career to have a social impact (Seider, Rabinowicz, & Gillmor, 2011). Eyler et al. (1997) suggested the learning in service-learning improves the quality of the service, and in so doing, contributes to the development of civic responsibility and commitment. Indeed, civic learning out
Service Learning in Natural Resources Classes: Measuring the Impacts on University Students
The impacts of three service learning courses in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources at Purdue University on student outcomes were evaluated using pre and post surveys. The three courses engaged a total of 69 unique students in projects intended to benefit the community, but according to survey responses there were differences in courses in terms of course enrollment motivations and desire to help the community after graduation. It was found that generally over the course of the semester, students developed a sense of connectedness and responsibility; a sense of the importance of helping others; and an interest in being personally involved in helping the community in the future. In courses where baseline measures were high, significant changes were not observed over the course of the semester. The survey questions used here were adapted from those typically used to measure the outcomes of courses focused on community development; this study illustrates that these survey questions can also work well for natural resource courses. Overall, the study confirms that service learning in natural resource courses can help produce civic-minded graduates, a goal of many universities and colleges.
The service learning projects: stakeholder benefits and potential class topics
Education + Training, 2016
Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to summarize the benefits of including a service learning project in college classes and focusses on benefits to all stakeholders, including students, community, and faculty.Design/methodology/approach– Using a snowball approach in academic databases as well as a nominal group technique to poll faculty, key topics for service learning across college disciplines are presented.Findings– Findings include a wide range of service learning projects across disciplines.Research limitations/implications– Areas for future research are identified to expand the service learning topic list as well as guide studies on the long-term benefit of service learning for each identified stakeholder.Practical implications– For new faculty or faculty new to service learning, the list of paper ideas is a good first step to identify projects. While not comprehensive, the list serves to stimulate topic ideas and fills a void in the service learning literature.Social impli...
Despite solid foundations for service-learning at California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB), the economic context of higher education in California, and in particular the CSU system, has created significant challenges for service-learning practitioners. This article provides an overview of the institutional foundations in place at CSUMB that have allowed for an extensive service-learning program, discusses mentoring as a pedagogical and ethical necessity that is threatened by the system's financial crisis, and concludes with thoughts about the value of a cohort model to alleviate mentoring challenges and the role of service-learning practitioners institutionally in the current economic and political context of higher education. JCC C NASPA 2012 http://journals.naspa.org/jcc/