Service learning: How to do it right

The first set of quotes that follow are from High-Impact Educational Practices, authored by George Kuh in collaboration with the Association of American Colleges and Universities ( AAC&U). In his work with AAC&U, Kuh helped...

...spotlight and verify a set of “effective educational practices” that, according to a growing array of research studies, are correlated with positive educational results for students from widely varying backgrounds.

Now drawing on new research, Kuh...shows that the practices...initially described as "effective" can now be appropriately labeled "high-impact" because of the substantial educational benefits they provide to students.

The results of participating in these high-impact practices, Kuh shows, are especially striking for students who start further behind in terms of their entering academic test scores. The benefits are similarly positive for students from communities that historically have been underserved in higher education.

One of the high-impact practices identified and verified by Kuh is service learning (AKA community-based learning). According to Kuh…

…in these programs, field-based “experiential learning” with community partners is an instructional strategy – and often a required part of the course. The idea is to give students direct experience with issues they are studying in the curriculum and with ongoing efforts to analyze and solve problems in their community. A key element in these programs is the opportunity students have to both apply what they are learning in real-world settings and reflect in a classroom setting on their service experiences. These programs model the idea that giving something back to the community is an important college outcome, and that working with community partners is good preparation for citizenship, work, and life.

One of the reasons why some of us tend to be skeptical about claims like these is that apparently good ideas about improving student learning have always existed in abundance and have often been tried, but with few, if any, beneficial results. And says Kuh, “While high-impact activities are appealing for the reasons…outlined, to engage students at high levels, these practices must be done well.”

OK, so how do you do service learning well? Across the board, colleges and universities struggle with service learning's twin goals of providing meaningful help to the community and academic rigor to students. The next set of quotes comes from a Feb. 27, 2009 Chronicle of Higher Education article.

Many fads came and went in the 1980s. But the idea of linking service and learning never went away.

The concept was kick-started in 1985, when several college presidents decided to counter the popular image of college students as disaffected, materialistic, and self-absorbed. That year the presidents of Brown, Georgetown, and Stanford Universities started Campus Compact….

The nonprofit group embraced the service-learning model, and by 2003 its membership had grown to include a quarter of all colleges in the United States. Students were logging millions of hours each year. But around that time, leaders in the field began to ask, "Service to what end?"

…colleges began to take a closer look not only at learning outcomes but also at whether students' volunteer work was actually making a difference in their communities. On both counts…many colleges were falling short.

That is something even colleges on the leading edge of service learning still worry about. California State University at Fresno…sends more than 10,000 students into the community each year…. But sheer numbers aren't enough….

The challenge is to focus not only on the quantity of volunteers but also on the quality of the work they are doing. At Wagner College, on Staten Island, the provost dreamed up an idea to do just that.

The approach…connects entire academic departments with single agencies on the island. That setup enables the college to draw up a financing proposal for a soup kitchen rather than just serve meals. And faculty members and their partner agencies develop syllabi for courses together - ensuring a clear connection between the soup line and the sociology tome on poverty.

As at Wagner, [CSU-Fresno] plans to start directing those volunteers to one particular neighborhood, in West Fresno, to maximize their impact. It is a move more colleges need to consider….

"One of the risks is that a lot of schools think, 'Oh, well, we're just going to do something,'" he says. "My fear is that people rush into this stuff, as they see donations and press, and that they don't really think about, 'What are the needs in the community?'"

And now, for the rest of the story...