How-to Do Service Learning

 

So, Why would you want to do Service Learning?

 

The Short List

  1. Looks good on your vitae, especially with ECU’s focus on engagement. New website marketing materials note that ECU will “Expand our strong programs in service learning so that tomorrow’s leaders have great classroom experiences, community engagement, and leadership training.”
  2. Gets students involved with real world activities and helps make the bridge between knowledge and the real world (or alternately between theory and practice.)
  3. Helps build town-gown relationships that can mean positive visibility in the community and set the stage for good opportunities for community-based research or creative activity projects.
  4. Means you and your students can make a difference and meet real world needs!

Longer, More Detailed Lists

 

Importance of Planning Ahead

Once you decide to forge into Service Learning with one of your classes, plan ahead so that you have plenty of time to get your project defined and have the key elements in place. Planning at least one semester in advance is a great idea indeed!!!!

 

Keep in mind that with service learning, the teacher is NOT the expert but rather a facilitator of the students’ learning. This means you spend a lot less time lecturing and a lot more time helping students come up with good, doable ideas and then work with them and with community partners to make it happen. It REALLY helps to get some of the groundwork for this set up well before the semester of service learning begins. This process takes time but is extremely rewarding!!!

 

Working with Others on Campus

Fortunately, we have the ECU Volunteer and Service Learning Center on campus. They regularly maintain relationships with more than 125 community partners in Pitt County and surrounding areas. The Center staff is quite familiar with community needs/opportunities and can help match a community partner with your class and your particular needs! You’ll want to meet and discuss your needs and get their input early on. That allows new connections to be made and all parties to prepare for the SL experience.

 

In addition, the Center staff helps coordinate volunteer and service learning efforts in this area. Importantly, they help prevent community partner burnout because of an overabundance of students from too many classes AND they identify underserved agencies that rarely work with students but could provide a valuable learning opportunity!

 

The ECU Volunteer and Service Learning Center can also:

  • Give suggestions and some resources for your SL project
  • Offer no cost insurance to students
  • Come to class and talk about SL and Volunteering opportunities
  • Set up meetings between faculty and community partners
  • Help with transportation of students (sometimes)
  • Offer a wide variety of written resources
  • Help faculty network with others doing SL
  • Provide campus-based service learning conference
  • Give information about regional/state SL conferences
  • And so much more….

Do plan to use this valuable resource!

 

Templates for Service Learning Projects

 

Consider These Four Principles When Planning Service Learning

Engagement: Does the service component meet a public good? How do you know this? Has the community partner been consulted? How? How have campus-community boundaries been negotiated and how will they be crossed?

 

Reflection: Is there a mechanism that encourages students to link their service experience to course content and to reflect upon why the service is important? How is the reflection component implemented?


Reciprocity: Is reciprocity evident in the service component? How? Reciprocity suggests that every individual, organization, and entity involved in the service learning functions as both a teacher and a learner. Participants (students, community partners) are perceived as colleagues, not as servers and clients. (Jacoby, 1996 p.36)

 

Public Dissemination: is service work presented to the public or is there an opportunity for the community members to enter into a public dialogue? This is particularly important when students or faculty collect data from community members as in a quick survey or in more involved community-based research projects.

[Adapted from information at: http://www.units.muohio.edu/saf/service/resources/documents/
ServiceLearningCourseDevelopmentandSixModelsofService
Learning_001.pdf
]

Seven Elements of High Quality Service Learning
Integrated Learning

  • The service learning project has clearly articulated knowledge, skill or value goals that arise from broader classroom or school goals.
  • The service informs the academic learning content, and the academic learning content informs the service.
  • Life skills learned outside the classroom are integrated back into classroom learning.

High Quality Service

  • The service responds to an actual community need that is recognized by the community.
  • The service is age-appropriate and well-organized.
  • The service is designed to achieve significant benefits for students and community.

Collaboration

  • The service learning project is a collaboration among as many of these partners as is feasible:  students, parents, community-based organization staff, school administrators, teachers, and recipients of service.
  • All partners benefit from the project and contribute to its planning.

Student Voice
Students participate actively in:

  • choosing and planning the service project;
  • planning and implementing the reflection sessions, evaluation, and celebration;
  • taking on roles and tasks that are appropriate to their age.

Civic Responsibility

  • The service learning project promotes students’ responsibility to care for others and to contribute to the community.
  • By participating in the service learning project, students understand how they can impact their community.

Reflection

  • Reflection establishes connections between students’ service experiences and the academic curriculum.
  • Reflection occurs before, during, and after the service learning project.

Evaluation

  • All the partners, especially students, are involved in evaluating the service learning project.
  • The evaluation seeks to measure progress toward the learning and service goals of the project.

[Available at: http://www.yscal.org/]

Six Models for Service Learning
Educator Kerrissa Heffernan has outlined six models for faculty to consider when developing service-learning experiences:

 

1. Discipline-Based Service-Learning Model
Students are expected to have a presence in the community throughout the semester and reflect on their experiences regularly using course content as a basis for their analysis and understanding. The link between course content and community experience must be made very clear to students. Benefit: The students’ education becomes multifaceted and their overall understanding of theoretical concepts improves.

 

2. Problem-Based Service-Learning Model
Students work similarly to “consultants” working for a “client.” Students work with community members to understand a particular community problem or need. This model presumes that students will have some knowledge they can draw upon to make recommendations to the community or develop a solution to the problem. Benefit: Problem-based service-learning often alleviates some logistical difficulties common in a weekly SL commitment.

 

3. Capstone Course Model
These courses are for majors and minors in a given discipline and are offered almost exclusively to students in their final semester. Capstone courses ask students to draw upon the knowledge they have obtained throughout their course work and combine it with relevant service work in the community. The goal of capstone courses is usually either exploring a new topic or synthesizing students understanding of their discipline. Benefit: Capstone courses offer an excellent way to help students transition from the world of theory to the world of practice.

 

Note: ECU’s School of Communication has successfully used service learning in the capstone course for over seven years.  In that time, over 1200 students have contributed 15,000 hours of community service to nonprofit organizations in the Pitt County area.  There are three different models which have been used in this cours:

  • The Individual Opportunity Model
  • The Small Group Model
  • The Adopt-an-Agency Model

Dr. Rebecca Dumlao can offer additional information about the benefits or drawbacks of those three models used in COMM 4080.

 

4. Service Internship Model
This is more intense than typical service-learning courses, with students working as many as 10 to 20 hours each week in a community setting. As in traditional internships, students are generally charged with producing a body of work that is of value to the community or site. However, unlike traditional internships, service internships have on-going faculty-guided reflection to challenge the students to analyze their new experiences using discipline-based theories. Service internships focus on reciprocity: the idea that the community and the student benefit equally from the experience, but the level of oversight required by a community partner supervisor can be highly demanding. Benefit: Service internships offer students the opportunity to develop valuable skills while simultaneously seeing how their skills can contribute to community.

 

5. Undergraduate Community-Based Action Research Model
Community-based action research is similar to an independent study option for the student who is highly experienced in community work. This approach can be effective with small classes or groups of students. In this model, students work closely with faculty members to learn research methodology while serving as advocates for communities. This model assumes that students are competent in time management, are self-directed learners, and can negotiate diverse communities. Any students’ failures can impact the community. Benefit: This method of service-learning is effective with small classes and groups of students.

 

6. Directed Study Additional/Extra Credit Model
Like other directed or independent studies, students register for up to three credits supervised by a specific faculty member. To be a service learning directed study, the other characteristics of service learning must be present in the independent work. This may be most appropriate for graduate students or undergraduates with some past experience in service learning courses. Benefit: Students choosing this option are typically self-directed and motivated.

[Adapted from: Heffernan, Kerrissa. Fundamentals of Service-Learning Course Construction. RI: Campus Compact, 2001, pp 2–7, 9.]

Reminder… Service-learning includes these elements:

  • Students provide a meaningful and needed service to the community, according to the community partners.
  • Relationships between the SOC and the community site strive to be a reciprocal partnership.
  • Connections between the course objectives and service activities are clearly conceptualized & articulated.
  • Faculty guide students in understanding the relevancy of their community experience(s) to the course objectives.
  • Faculty provide opportunities for students to reflect upon their experiences using one or more mediums.
  • Disciplinary knowledge informs the work done by students in the community.
  • Classroom activities allow students to learn from other class members in addition to the faculty member

 

Capstone Courses and Learning Objectives

 

Planning your Syllabus and Other Practical Matters
On many campuses, some courses are designated Service Learning courses and help meet campus-wide curricular objectives as well as discipline-specific objectives. ECU is now beginning to designate service learning courses.

 

Regardless of whether you have a designated Service Learning course or not, adding specific  SL objectives to your syllabus is an important step in showing students (and others) how you plan to carry out this form of engagement. (This also sets the stage for later assessment possibilities since assessments are linked back to the course objectives.)

 

Service Learning syllabi typically:

  1. Explain the role of service in the course
  2. Demonstrate specifically how service connects to course content
  3. Clarify why service is the pedagogy of choice
  4. Describe what the service component will entail

 

SL Course Objectives on the ECU Campus
The ECU Volunteer and Service Learning Center staff recognizes that while each SL course/experience will have discipline specific learning objectives, there are also important broad curricular goals. So, they note that SL students will gain one or all of the following:

  • Awareness of community & social issues
  • Respect for people and diversity in all its forms
  • Greater self leadership which includes understanding critical issues and different perspectives, developing empathy, developing critical thinking, and personal development”

 

Possible Discipline Specific Course Objectives

Service learning has already been used in a variety of communication courses. SL has been used by other COMM faculty nationwide in a wide variety of courses: persuasion, interpersonal, intercultural, small group, rhetoric, research and theory, public relations, organizational communication, mass communication,etc. More specific information about using SL in different courses can be found at the Best Practices link.

 

Here are some possible SL-related course objectives:

  • SL connects theory and practice.
    Depending on your course, SL can offer a way for students to engage with the material and share it with others in the community Or They can use what they’ve learned in class to understand real world interactions in new ways. OR They can develop audio, video or print products for an agency and their constituents. This is just a quick list of possibilities and there are many, many more!
  • SL can connect diverse people.
    SL has also, at some institutions, been used as a way to foster global initiatives and research while actively involving students and faculty in new cultural experiences.
  • SL Can Integrate Learning .
    Our individual courses tend to focus on very specific content, but service learning experiences frequently involve a synthesis of ideas within a course or across courses. That is, when students are faced with real world dilemmas or problems in their SL experience, they may draw upon a variety of expertise and skills.
  • SL Promotes Reflection Upon Learning  (i.e. Critical Thinking).
    As you may have gathered, reflection is an integral part of most service learning and by definition, reflection involves thinking critically about the SL experience.
  • SL Offers Tangible Evidence of COMM Competencies.
    Service learning experiences that require students to develop a communication product are beneficial for the agency as well as the student.  Samples can be included in portfolios or the experiences and learning objectives can be listed on the student’s resume.

 

Capstone Learning Objectives (from the COMM 4080 course)
Service Learning Project

  • Apply what you’ve learned in COMM classes in the real world
  • Gain a deeper insight into the knowledge and skills you need in the work world
  • Foster civic and societal involvement, helping to build a promising future!

 

These are just a sampling of the possible course objectives.  Use your creativity to determine those best for your class!

 

Past Projects and Lessons Learned

 

The Learning (Scholarship) in Service Learning

 

Assessments and Research Related to Service Learning

Assessmentsfor Service Learning (SL) and Research on SL may not be the same thing!   BOTH are important!

 

Generally speaking, assessments are used to determine the effectiveness of different pedagogical practices in achieving classroom or curricular goals or to look at the practices of service learning on a campus. (ECU’s SL Center has some evaluation measures they encourage faculty to use with students at the end of the semester. Others are offered below.)

 

In contrast, research projects related to SL rely on qualitiative and/or quantitative research methods to answer specific research questions or to test hypotheses. Like other forms of scholarly research, SL research (hopefully) results in publication in a disciplinary journal or in a SL focused journal.  Sometimes assessment results can be used as part of a research project, but the overall results should add to scholarly understanding about service learning and the community projects.

 

Overview: Service Learning Assessments
Standardized assessments exist. The best ones gather information from three groups: students, faculty members, and community partners. These multiple perspective assessments offer valuable information overall effectiveness not only for student or classroom outcomes, but also look at the ways the projects actually made a difference!

 

Service Learning assessments can readily be used in conjunction with required classroom measures such as the SOIS and the evaluations collected by the ECU Volunteer and Service Learning Center at the end of the semester. They can be used to:

  • Share feedback about what worked and what didn’t offering clues about how to modify or change a particular course
  • Describe new possibilities for future projects or experiences
  • Pinpoint effectiveness of different course activities
  • Help meet some accountability requirements (i.e. SACs, etc.)
  • Inform future courses and curricular modifications/changes
  • Offer information to a faculty member or the SOC for visibility, recognition, etc.

 

Sources for SL Assessments    
Learn and Serve America’s National Service Learning Clearinghouse offers sources of SL Assessment instruments.  Check them out at:
http://servicelearning.org/instant_info/hot_topics/eval_assess/index.php

The National Communication Association also has assessment resources at:
http://www.natcom.org/nca/Template2.asp?bid=318

Western Carolina University has developed three separate assessment instruments: one for students, one for faculty, and one for community partners.
http://www.wcu.edu/studentd/service_learning/assessment.html

 

Service Learning Research

Surprisingly, a rapidly developing literature exists on service learning.
Four volumes of service learning dissertations have been collected and are available in the form of annotated bibliographies through the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse. 

 

In addition, articles about service learning can be found in scholarly journals within the Communication field as well as in related fields of study. There are also a number of journals or recurring special issues of journals with a focus on service learning scholarship.

 

Sources for Service Learning Research

Campus Compact, a national organization focused on SL and civic engagement maintains a link to publishing outlets for scholars.


A Note about Tenure and the Scholarship of Engagement

Generally speaking, civic engagement research requires vigor in order to be publishable. Some service learning scholars visiting the ECU campus have suggested that Service Learning research can be MORE difficult and complicated than other forms of research. In the past, few scholarly journals were available for academics desiring to do engagement research, but this is changing with new journals specifically focusing in this area. Also, not long ago there were few knowledgable scholars on service learning to serve as external reviewers. Again, this is changing.

 

On campus, discussions are underway to consider how to evaluate the scholarship of engagement for tenure and other forms of review. Faculty interested in research (or creative activity) related to Service Learning should stay abreast of these discussions while making careful strategic decisions about how best to meet their own tenure requirements.