Service Learning 101

Service Learning 101 An Introduction for SBCC Faculty

Simple Definition Service learning combines community service with academic instruction, focusing on critical, reflective thinking and personal and civic responsibility.

Expanded Definition The National Center for service learning expands this definition with three characteristics: 1) Service learning constitutes activities that are focused on meeting the needs of the community where the need has to do with the well being of the individuals and/or the environment in which they live. 2) Key academic and/or civic objectives to be achieved through combining service with learning have been identified prior to the activity. 3) Opportunities for students to reflect on their experience and its connection to specific academic objectives are incorporated into the activity.

AnotherDefinition • Bob Bringle and Julie Hatcher define service learning as a course-based, credit–bearing educational experience in which students 1) participate in an organized service activity that meets identified community needs and 2) reflect on service activity as a means of gaining deeper understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline and a enhanced sense of civic responsibility.

One more definition Alliance for Service learning in Educational Reform emphasizes goal of civic responsibility and community engagement: service learning involves students in community activities that complement their classroom studies. The aim is to help students increase their academic skill through understanding how what they learn in school can be applied to the real world.

GOALS • To enhance students’ academic skills and learning. • To promote life-long commitment to civic responsibility. • To provide reflective opportunity to develop critical thinking skills. • To broaden the understanding of curriculum and discipline. • The goal is to blend service and learning so service reinforces, improves and strengthens learning and learning reinforces, improves and strengthens the service. The pedagogy of service learning produces a greater impact than either could have produced separately. (Andrew Furco)

Characteristics of Service Learning • Three characteristics: 1) It is based on the experience of meeting needs in the community 2) It incorporates reflection and academic learning. 3) It contributes to the students’ interest in and understanding of community life. (Robert Bringle, and Julie Hatcher) • Service learning programs are distinguished from other approaches to experiential education by their intention to equally benefit the provider and the recipient of the service as well as to ensure equal focus on both the service being provided and the learning that is occurring.(Andrew Furco, 1996)

Characteristics cont’ • Fosters the development of those “intangibles” – empathy, personal values, beliefs, awareness, self-esteem, self-confidence, social-responsibility and helps foster a sense of caring for others.

Service Learning is Different • Internship: Internship programs engage students in service activities primarily for the purpose of providing students with hands-on experiences that enhance their learning or understanding of issues relevant to a particular area of study. • Volunteerism: Is the engagement of students in activities where the primary emphasis is on the service being provided and the primary intended beneficiary is clearly on the service recipient.

Why colleges? • A students’ college career is a time of training, not only for a career, but also for life. Research by Arthur Levine of Harvard University shows an estimate of 64% of colleges and university students participate in public service activities in addition to their course work. Service learning enhances learning. Service learning activities build new relationships between students and instructor, between the community and the college and between the people being served and the student.(Judith S. Berson, 1994)

Why Colleges cont’ • Students as consumers expect that the learning will be directly applicable to their immediate life interests. Students want to be able to see a visible connection between what they are learning and how that affects their daily lives. This is referred to as the “test of connectivity”.(Robert Exley, 1998)

Why community colleges? • The community college’s mission is committed to addressing the needs of the community. • Community colleges are a mirror of the community. • Most community college students are members of the community.

Faculty Role • Embrace the service learning pedagogy • Develop learning objectives with service opportunities • Include service learning in syllabus: extra credit, substitution, integral part of class or 4th unit credit • Work with service learning center on community resources • Guide in-class reflection • Review reflective journals • Create a grading criteria

Finding Examples of Curriculum • Find books at the Career Center • Talk with your colleagues • Look on the the internet http://csf.colorado.edu/sl/syllabi/

Examples of Activities • Math students tutor third-graders in arithmetic. • Criminal justice students walk downtown streets in a community-policing program. • Sociology students serve soup in a soup kitchen and assist the homeless. • Communication students record books for the visually impaired. • Anthropology students collect and document what life was like during major recent historical periods by visiting nursing homes, rehabs, and veterans’ hospitals.

More Examples • Anthropology students help people in halfway houses to explore their “roots”. • Accounting students work with neighborhood boards to put on household finance & budgeting workshops for residents of low-income areas, assist non-profits with fund-raising efforts and help senior citizens with tax returns. • Art students create fund raising event: “A Day without Art” featuring artists who have died of AIDS-related causes and design & create murals to beautify the public schools K-12.

Even More • Biology students work with local schools to conduct presentations on the pathology of AIDS, HIV infection and sexually transmitted diseases and prevention. • Business students design a strategic plan for not-for-profit organizations and form a “Consumer Helpline” to act as advocates for consumers’ rights. • Computer students personalize software for local non-profits to better manage volunteers, resources, finances, inventories, etc.

The Examples Keep Coming • English students read books to children in schools, work with non-profits to develop hard-hitting brochures for use in recruitment and information and assist in an adult literacy program • History students study the history of homelessness in the surrounding community. Research will aid local shelters and governmental and social service agencies to better serve the homeless.

The Examples are Endless • Political Science students undertake training in community mediation skills & do work afterwards in the city community dispute mediation center and assist with voter registration efforts • Psychology students apply social psychological principles to change people’s behavior concerning recycling. • You are sure to come up with your own brilliant idea.

Benefits of Service Learning • A summary of findings of service learning research in higher education J. Eyler, D. Giles, C. Stenson & C. Gray, 2001, At a Glance: What We Know About the Effects of Service learning 1993-2000 -

Benefits to the Student • Students learn by teaching and mentoring and gain real-world experiences • As students examine these community-directed activities in the classroom, they can see relevance of what they are learning to help civic life. • Reciprocal learning: those who provide service and those who receive it “learn” from the experience. • Learn responsibility, build character, solve problems and gain a better understanding of their communities

Students Reap Many Benefits • Positive effect on interpersonal development and ability to work with others. • Positive effect on reducing stereotypes and facilitating cultural and racial understanding. • Positive effect on sense of social responsibility and citizenship skills. • Increased ability to apply what they learned in the real world.

The Benefits are Abundant • Impact on academic outcomes as demonstrated complexity of understanding, problem analysis, critical thinking and cognitive development. • Contributes to career development. • Reports stronger faculty relationship than those not involved in service learning. • Improves students’ satisfaction with college experience. • Increases likelihood of graduation.

Benefits to the Faculty • Innovative and effective teaching pedagogy. • Engages students in learning a particular discipline. • Increases student awareness of current societal issues as they relate to academic areas of interest. • Increases understanding of course content and a broader understanding of the discipline.

More Faculty Benefits • Fosters a closer relationship with students and their learning. • Supports a broader development of student development. • Gives opportunity for students to increase their critical thinking skills. • Builds a deeper association with students.

Benefits to the Institution • Provides visible leadership in the community. • Supports institutional mission. • Increases retention. • Improves students’ satisfaction with college. • Builds reciprocal partnerships with the local community. • Creates new areas for research. • Extends campus resources into the community and reinforces the value of the scholarship of engagement.

Benefits to the Community • Provides substantial human resources to meet educational, human, safety and environmental needs of the community • Allows energy and enthusiasm of college students to contribute to meeting needs. • Fosters an ethic of service and civic participation in students who will be tomorrow’s volunteers and civic leaders. • Creates potential for additional partnerships and collaboration with the campus.

Reflection • Reflection is the intentional consideration of an experience in light of a particular learning objective. Reflection should be both retrospective and prospective: students should consider their service experience in order to influence their future action. Effective reflection activities are linked to particular learning objectives of the class, are guided by the instructor, occur regularly throughout the course, allow for feedback and assessment and include opportunity for the clarification of values. When reflection activities are integrated into class discussion and appear on exams, students report higher levels of satisfaction with the course and greater academic gains from the experience. (Julie Hatcher, 1998)

Reflection Activities • Journal writing: journal entries about their experience and its relation to the course curriculum and personal perspectives. • Directed writing: Identify sections from class readings and structure questions for students to answer in relationship to their service learning experience. • Experiential research paper: Ask student to identify, research and write about an underlying social issue they have encountered in their service learning experience.

Reflection Activities cont’ • Ethical case studies: Have student write up an ethical dilemma in relationship to their service experience including the context, people who would be involved, and the controversy that creates the dilemma. • Service learning portfolio: Collect evidence of both process and products completed and an evaluation essay providing a self assessment on how effectively they met their service learning objectives.

Reflection Activities cont’ • Exit cards: A brief note card reflection turned in at the end of each class reflecting on disciplinary content from class discussion or lecture in relation to their service experience. • Class presentations: A presentation of their service learning experience with an analysis of the relationship to course material and broader discipline principles.

Topics to include in a reflective journal • Orientation: Why am I doing this? • Observation: What do I see, hear or experience? • Feelings/values clarification: What are my values in relationship to the issues? • Personal analysis: Am I part of the problem or part of the solution? • Social analysis: What are the social roots of the problem? How can we make positive change? • Curriculum relevance: How does this relate to what I am learning in class?

Service Learning Organizations and Resources • Campus Compact • Learn and Serve America • National Information Center for Service learning • American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) Service learning Clearinghouse • National Society for Experiential Education (NSEE) • Corporation for National Service (CNS) • Partnership for Service learning • American Association for Higher Education (AAHE)

Websites • www.aacc.nche.edu/servicelearning • www.compact.org • http://umn.edu/~serve • www.aacu-edu.org • http://www.servicelearning.org/ • http://csf.colorado.edu/sl/ • http://www.learnandserve.org/ • http://www.learningindeed.org/ • http://csf.colorado.edu/sl/syllabi/ • http://www.umich.edu/~mjcsl/

Books The Higher Education Service – Learning Sourcebook Robin J. Crews, Oryx Press, Greenwood Publishing Successful Service – Learning Programs; New Models of Excellence in Higher Education Edward Zlotkowski, Editor, Published by Anker Publishers Service-Learning Reader: Reflections and Perspective on Service Gail Albert, et al, and ed., Raleigh, NC: National Society for Experiential Education, 1994 A Practitioner’s Guide to Reflection in Service-Learning Janet Eyler, Dwight E. Giles Jr. and Angela Schmied, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, 1996

More Books Community Service and Higher Learning R. A. Rhoads, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997 Academic Service learning: A Pedagogy of Action and Reflection R.A Rhoads and J.P. Howard, eds., San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998 Service Learning J. Schine, ed., Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997

Quotes • “Anyone can be great because anyone can serve.” - Martin Luther King Jr. • Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I may remember. Involve me and I learn” – Ben Franklin • “One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something” – Henry Thoreau • “I don’t know what your destiny will be, but the one thing I know, the only ones among you who will really be happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.” - Albert Schweitzer • “ Work to make a living, serve to make a life.” – Will Rogers

More Quotes • “When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die” – Eleanor Roosevelt • “Be the change you wish to create” – Mahatma Gandhi • “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” – John F. Kennedy • “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world” – Anne Frank • “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” –Margaret Mead

References • Andrew Furco, 1996, Service learning: A Balanced Approach to Experiential Learning • Bringle, Robert and Julie Hatcher, “A Service Learning Curriculum for Faculty”, Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning • Judith S. Berson, 1994, Community College Journal, Community Colleges and Service learning: A Marriage Made in Heaven • Robert Exley, 1998, AACC Service learning Resource Guide, Service learning and Curricular Integration, Vol.1, No. 1 • Julie Hatcher, 1998, Reflection: Connecting Service to Academic Learning

Service Learning 101