Assessing Service-Learning and Civic Engagement: Principles and Techniques by
This book offers a broad overview of many issues related to assessment in higher education, with specific application for understanding the impact of service-learning and civic engagement initiatives. This revised edition includes an additional chapter that explores recent changes in the assessment landscape and offers examples and resources for designing assessment strategies for community engagement in higher education. The original text includes narrative addressing assessment issues and strategies; a detailed discussion of learning from multiple research projects performed over the past two decades about impact on multiple constituencies -students, faculty, communities, and institutions; and a discussion of strategies for data collection, analysis, synthesis, and reporting. Specific assessment instruments for use with each constituency are provided, including suggestions for administration, preparation, and data analysis. This volume will be helpful for individuals seeking a comprehensive resource on assessment issues in higher education.
EService-Learning: Creating experiential learning and civic engagement through online and hybrid courses by
This book serves as an introduction to using online teaching technologies and hybrid forms of teaching for experiential learning and civic engagement. Service-learning has kept pace neither with the rapid growth in e-learning in all its forms nor with the reality that an increasing number of students are learning online without exposure to the benefits of this powerful pedagogy. Eservice-learning (electronic service-learning) combines service-learning and on-line learning and enables the delivery of the instruction and/or the service to occur partially or fully online. Eservice-learning allows students anywhere, regardless of geography, physical constraints, work schedule, or other access limitations, to experience service-learning. It reciprocally also equips online learning with a powerful tool for engaging students. In eservice-learning, the core components of service, learning, and reflection may take a different form due to the online medium--for example, reflection often occurs through discussion board interactions, journals, wikis, or blogs in an eservice-learning course. Moreover, the service, though still community-based, creates a world of opportunities to connect students with communities across the globe--as well as at their very own doorstep. This book introduces the reader to the four emerging types of eservice-learning, from Extreme EService-Learning (XE-SL) classes where 100% of the instruction and 100% of the service occur online, to three distinct forms of hybrid where either the service or the instruction are delivered wholly on-line - with students, for instance, providing online products for far-away community partners - or in which both are delivered on-site and online. It considers the instructional potential of common mobile technologies - phones, tablets and mobile reading devices. The authors also address potential limitations, such as technology challenges, difficulties sustaining three-way communication among the instructor, community partner, and students, and added workload. The book includes research studies on effectiveness as well as examples of practice such drafting grants for a community partner, an informational technology class building online communities for an autism group, and an online education class providing virtual mentoring to at-risk students in New Orleans from across the country.
Service-Learning Essentials: Questions, Answers, and Lessons Learned by
Service-Learning Essentials is the resource youneed to help you develop high-quality service-learning experiencesfor college students. Written by one of the field's leading expertsand sponsored by Campus Compact, the book is the definitive work onthis high-impact educational practice. Service-learning has beenidentified by the Association of American Colleges and Universitiesas having been widely tested and shown to be beneficial to collegestudents from a wide variety of backgrounds. Organized in an accessible question-and-answer format, the bookresponds clearly and completely to the most common questions andconcerns about service-learning. Each chapter addresses issuesrelated to individual practice as well as to the collective work ofstarting and developing a service-learning center or program, withexamples drawn from a variety of disciplines, situations, andinstitutional types. The questions range from basic to advanced andthe answers cover both the fundamentals and complexities ofservice-learning. Topics include: Determining what service-learning opportunities institutionsshould offer How to engage students in critical reflection in academiccourses and in cocurricular experiences Best practices for developing and sustaining mutuallybeneficial campus-community partnerships Integrating service-learning into the curriculum in alldisciplines and at all levels, as well as various areas of studentlife outside the classroom Assessing service-learning programs and outcomes The dilemmas of service-learning in the context of power andprivilege The future of service-learning in online and rapidlyglobalizing environments Service-learning has virtually limitless potential to enablecolleges and universities to meet their goals for student learningwhile making unique contributions to addressing unmet local,national, and global needs. However, in order to realize thesebenefits, service-learning must be thoughtfully designed andcarefully implemented. This easy-to-use volume contains everythingfaculty, leaders, and staff members need to know aboutservice-learning to enhance communities, improve higher educationinstitutions, and educate the next generation of citizens,scholars, and leaders.
The Student Companion to Community-Engaged Learning: What You Need to Know for Transformative Learning and Real Social Change by
This compact, accessibly written text prepares students for their experience of community-based learning. It is designed for students to read and reflect on independently or to foster discussion in class on their motivations and dispositions toward community engagement and service learning. It prepares students to work with diverse individuals, groups, and organizations that may be outside their prior experience. Faculty can use the book as a tool to deepen the educational experience of the course and enrich community engagement. This text is a guide to what's involved in community-engaged learning, from understanding the pervasiveness of social, economic and environmental problems, to learning about how individuals and organizations in communities work to overcome them. Students will discover through a process of reflection how service connects to personal development and the content of their courses, builds their ability to engage with people different from themselves, and develops new life skills, all in the context of working with communities to overcome systemic injustice. Critical questions woven into each chapter prompt students to reflect on ideas and perspectives about social justice, community development, and their role in fostering them. The book concludes with case studies of students who have experienced the transformative power of community-engaged learning. The stories illustrate common themes inherent in the student experience, including listening to understand, challenging stereotypes, learning the nature of their role, and seeing the world through a new lens. A special feature of this book is the embedded QR codes that provide access, as students read the text, to online resources, and original and public videos that explore particular themes or perspectives more deeply. The authors also include text directed to faculty to provide ideas about framing their community-engaged course and integrating the book.
The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning by
Service learning has become an institutionalized practice in higher education: students are sent out to disadvantaged communities to paint, tutor, feed & help organize. However, what are the benefits for the communities involved? This volume explores the social impact of service learning.
