Students -- Teachers
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Required Forms
Student Forms packet PDF
Student Responsibilities PDF, Word
Optional Forms
Service Learning Objectives packet PDF
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Good Practices
Reflections
Good Practices
Principles of Good Practice for Service-Learning Pedagogy
Excerpted from Howard, Jeffery, ed., Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning: Service-Learning Course Design Workbook, University of Michigan: OCSL Press, Summer 2001, pp. 16-19
Principle 1: Academic Credit Is for Learning, Not for Service
Academic credit is not awarded for doing service or for the quality of the service, but rather for the student´s demonstration of academic and civic learning.
Principle 2: Do Not Compromise Academic Rigor
Principle 3: Establish Learning Objectives
It is a service-learning maxim that one cannot develop a quality service-learning course without first setting very explicit learning objectives. This principle is foundational to service-learning.
Principle 4: Establish Criteria for the Selection of Service Placements
Requiring students to serve in any community-based organization as part of a service-learning course is tantamount to requiring students to read any book as part of a traditional course. Faculty who are deliberate about establishing criteria for selecting community service placements will find that students are able to extract more relevant learning from their respective service experiences, and are more likely to meet course learning objectives.
Principle 5: Provide Educationally-Sound Learning Strategies To Harvest Community Learning and Realize Course Learning Objectives
Requiring service-learning students to merely record their service activities and hours as their journal assignment is tantamount to requiring students in engineering to log their activities and hours in the lab. Learning interventions that promote critical reflection, analysis, and application of service experiences enable learning. These activities include classroom discussions, presentations, and journal and paper assignments that support analysis of service experiences in the context of the course academic and civic learning objectives.
Principle 6: Prepare Students for Learning from the Community
Most students lack experience with both extracting and making meaning from experience and in merging it with other academic and civic course learning strategies. Therefore, even an exemplary reflection journal assignment will yield, without sufficient support, uneven responses. Menlo (1993) identifies for competencies to accentuate learning from the community: reflective listening, seeking feedback, acuity in observation, and mindfulness in thinking.
Principle 7: Minimize the Distinction Between the Students´ Community Learning Role and Classroom Learning Role
Classrooms and communities are very different learning contexts. Each requires students to assume a different learner role. The solution is to shape the learning environments so that students assume similar learning roles in both contexts. Re-norm the traditional classroom toward one that values students as active learners.
Principle 8: Rethink the Faculty Instructional Role
If faculty encourage students´ active learning in the classroom, what would be a concommitment and consistent change in one´s teaching role? Commensurate with the proceeding principle´s recommendation for an active student learning posture, this principle advocates that servicelearning teachers, too, rethink their role. An instructor role that would be most compatible with an active student role shifts away from a singular reliance on transmission of knowledge and toward mixed pedagogical methods that include learning facilitation and guidance.
Principle 9: Be Prepared for Variation in, and Some Loss of Control with, Student Learning Outcomes
Principle 10: Maximize the Community Responsibility Orientation of the Course
One of the necessary conditions of a service-learning course is purposeful civic learning. Designing classroom norms and learning strategies that not only enhance academic learning but also encourage civic learning are essential to purposeful civic learning. For example, efforts to convert from individual to group assignments, and from instructor-only to instructor and student review of student assignments, re-norms the teaching-learning process to be consistent with the civic orientation of service-learning.
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Reflections
The following information is from "Campus Compact: Service Learning - Using a Structured Reflection to Enhance Learning From Service" at the Campus Compact Website.
The term (italics)structured reflection(italics) is used to refer to a thoughtfully constructed process that challenges and guides students in (1) examining critical issues related to their service learning project, (2) connecting the service experience to coursework, (3) enhancing the development of civic and ethical skills and values, and (4) assisting students in finding personal relevance in the work.
- What is structured reflection?
- Why is structured reflection critical to effective service learning?
- What are the goals of reflection?
- When should reflection occur?
- Who is involved in structured reflection?
- What is the role of faculty in structured reflection?
- What are the different types of reflective activities that can be used in service learning?
- How can faculty design a reflection process that is appropriate for the context and setting of a service learning project?
- What are the principles of effective reflection?
- What is the potential impact of structured reflection on a course?
- Sample Reflections Assignments PDF