Introducing, Developing, and Integrating Service Learning:

  • Articulate for students specific course objectives and how service/community based experiences will provide the text to fulfill them.
  • Specify the desired outcomes for students in terms of their service experience and its link to course content so that they can strive to meet them.
  • Develop ways to integrate course content across texts – keeping in mind that the community is one text.
  • Challenge students and yourself to learn together, to go beyond the text, to ask the deeper questions which emerge when we strive to work toward a more just society.
  • Ask for the support you need to make the learning experience successful in your course.

Well-facilitated Reflection:

  • Is ongoing, with regular opportunities for guided and purposeful reflection from the outset of the course to the close of the semester.
  • Responds to the diversity of learning styles of students with multiple forms of written and oral reflection, individually and in small and large groups.
  • Is embedded in the assessment component of the course in order to communicate to students that connections between content and community service are valued.
  • Calls on open-ended questions that allow for creativity to surface, such as “How might this look different?”
  • Challenges each student to assess the knowledge, values, and skills he or she brings to the project.
  • Leaves some cognitive and topical issues open for ongoing discussion to encourage reflection between class sessions.

Evaluating Service Learning:

  • Assign grades to reflect the processing of students' experience and not the service hours alone.
  • Look for ways to evaluate analytical skills, communication skills, and critical thinking and judgment through paper, presentation, and discussion grades.
  • Create assignments that require students to integrate course content and service experience.
  • Consider asking service supervisors to submit student evaluation forms that may or may not contribute to students' course grade through incentive points.
  • As in any other course, students' final grades in a service-learning course should reflect academic development and skill application.