Digital Commons Network^™

Service Learning Models Connecting Computer Science To The Community, Carol Traynor, Maria Mckenna

Service Learning, General

Service learning is an educational experience that enables students to apply material learned in the classroom by volunteering in a real-world situation. This paper provides a brief review of service learning and describes two models that the computer science department at Saint Anselm College implemented successfully.

Incorporation Of Service Learning Into An Interpersonal Skills For Leadership Course Using The Serve Model, Susan Fritz, Brent Goertzen, Lillian Gomez

Higher Education

Interpersonal Skills for Leadership has been taught at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for more than 30 years and has been a key course students use to satisfy the communication/interpersonal skills requirement in the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources. While interpersonal skills topics are covered and practiced in the course, additional practice occurs through service learning with a client in a community agency. This requirement equates to approximately 6,500 service hours provided annually in the Lincoln community. This level of service requires a well-developed placement and evaluation process. The course incorporates the SERVE model for integrating service learning into …

The Impact Of Service-Learning On Academic Outcomes: A Statewide Study Of Michigan Learn And Serve Grantees, Stephen Meyer

Project Summaries

Service-learning is a teaching strategy that involves students in service projects that are connected to the curriculum. Service-learning has its roots in the ideas of philosophers, such as Piaget and Dewey, who argued that students learn more when they are actively involved in their own learning and when learning has a distinct purpose (Anderson, Kinsley, Negroni, & Price, 1991; Conrad & Hedin, 1991; Kinsley, 1997). A body of evidence is building in support of the positive academic outcomes of service-learning (see Billig, 2000 for a review). However, the conclusions that can be drawn from many of these research studies are …

Wai'anae High School Service-Learning Study, Rmc Research Corporation

Project Summaries

Located on the leeward coast of the island of O, ahu, Wai' anae High School serves a rural community with the largest population of native Hawaiians in the world. The school also serves a high concentration of students from low-income families and students who receive special education services. The Hawaiian Studies Program (HSP) at Wai'anae High School is a school within a school that began in 1997 with 30 students. During the 2002-2003 school year, the program included 60 students in Grades 10 through 12. The program is open to all students and includes wide racial, ethnic, and academic diversity

Service To Children Through Teaching, School Of Education

Curriculum

This guide features: Lesson Plan for Writing Letter to Military Personnel; Parts of a Friendly Letter; Book for Class to Welcome New Students; Describe Your Teacher; Know Your Town; Care of Classroom Pets; Picnic Game; Positive Characteristics About our Classmates; Teaching Procedures and Practices; and a Service Learning Lesson Plan.

Private Versus Public Juvenile Correctional Facilities: Do Differences In Environmental Quality Exist?, Gaylene Armstrong, Doris Layton Mackenzie

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Expansion in the operation of private sector correctional facilities has sparked a number of debates. A primary concern is that environmental quality for offenders incarcerated in privately operated facilities will be poorer than publicly operated facilities due to the profit motivation of the private sector. This study examined data collected from 48 residential juvenile correctional facilities in 19 states (16 private and 32 public facilities). Self-report surveys, including cognitive assessments of 13 conditions of confinement, were administered to juvenile delinquents (N = 4,121) incarcerated in these facilities. Data from facility records were also incorporated in the analysis. A hierarchical …

Md. Service Learning: Classroom Link Weak?, Michelle Galley

School K-12

Maryland students are mucking out horse stalls, dancing in ballets, answering telephones, and ladling soup for the homeless in order to graduate from high school.

Eleven years after the legislature passed a first-of-its-kind state law requiring all public school students to complete 75 hours of service learning, young people are fulfilling the requirement with varying degrees of success.

Using Polvika's Model To Create A Service-Learning Partnership, Gwendolyn F. Foss, Maria M. Bonaiuto, Z. Sue Johnson, Dee M. Moreland

Partnerships/Community

Collaboration can maximize limited resources of universities, school systems, and public health departments by offering learning from experience. Polvika's theoretical model and principles from Community-Campus Partnerships for Health guided development of a service-learning partnership among a university, a county health department, and an alternative school in a large public school district. Of three commonly identified patterns of service-learning, this partnership demonstrated the pattern that equally emphasizes service to a community or agency, and mutual learning by all participants. All organizations in the partnership share a common goal to optimize the health of children in schools, and to provide quality learning …

Student Experiences With Service-Learning In Sport Management, Gregg Bennett

Higher Education

Many professors utilize academically-based service-learning in their classes to provide students with an experiential experience. In fact, service-learning has increased in popularity in higher education due mainly to the many perceived benefits of the method. Service-learning is being written about extensively by several authors (Gray, Ondaatje, Fricker, & Geschwind, 2000; Hilosky, Moore, & Reynolds, 2000; Jackowski & Gullion, 1998; Mattson & Shea, 1997; Sutton, 1989; Zlotkowski, 1995), as educators grapple with how to implement this effective means of learning into the curriculum.

The Legitimacy Of Experiential Learning In Research Universities, Angela E. Schmiede

Thesis, Dissertations, Student Creative Activity, and Scholarship

The goal of this historical and exploratory study was to describe and analyze the spread and legitimacy of experiential learning to and within Cornell University and Stanford University. Using an institutional and political framework, this analysis focused on understanding how elements of legitimacy from the academy, the experiential learning field and the external environment intersected to shape the diffusion, forms and purposes of experiential learning within Cornell and Stanford. The constructions of legitimacy within these three different contexts shifted over time, influencing the extent to which experiential learning was adopted; and once adopted, the extent to which it was adapted, …

Community Leaders' Perceptions Of University And College Efforts To Encourage Civic Engagement, Richard A. Brisbin Jr., Susan Hunter

Civic Engagement

"Students who volunteer in the community often end up staying or coming back after they graduate because they find out they can make a difference;' reports one economic development director in West Virginia. He and other community leaders agreed that getting college students involved in community activities not only had short-term benefits for the community but that often their experiences led to long-term gains for community life. This finding is important in a time when scholars, politicians, and pundits argue that a crisis of civic disengagement affects American politics. As a partial remedy for this crisis, educators have linked partnerships …

Experiential Learning As Service For Others, Mary K. Canales, Helen French

Service Learning, General

In the hours and days immediately after the collapse of the World Trade Center on Sept 11, 2001. When it became evident there would be few survivors to care for, nurses realized that despite their clinical skills and medical knowledge, they were powerless to help during this tragedy. Many began to question the meaning of their practice and ask themselves what they could do to serve their country and fellow citizens in this time of uncertainty. Since the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, many nurses are learning other ways to serve and translating that service into personal and professional growth.

Service-Learning In Agricultural Instruction: A Guide For Implementing Real-World, Hands-On, Community Based Teaching And Learning, Carol E. O'Neil

Guides

Service-learning (SL) is defined as "a credit-bearing, educational experience in which students participate in an organized service activity that meets identified community needs and reflect on the service activity in such a way as to gain further understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of civic responsibility" (Bringle and Hatcher, 1995). The service-learning movement has gained tremendous popularity during the past decade in response to visionaries like Boyer (1990), who called for radical change in higher education toward the "scholarship of engagement," in which universities engage with communities as equal partners for the …

Learning That Matters, Shelley H. Billig

Special Topics, General

In Georgia, kindergarten and first-grade students conduct a community mapping activity to figure out the needs of the children within the school. Kindergartners new to the school say that the school layout is confusing and it is hard to find their way to the classrooms. Each class considers solutions, and students decide to label the hallways with street signs. Each class brainstorms potential names for the hallways, and first grade students design and conduct a survey. They eliminate names that do not represent positive images. (No Shock Street because it would scare the five-year-olds.) The surveys are administered, the data …

El Milagro: The Miracle Of Service Learning On The Border, Kathleen A. Baca, Elizabeth J. Gutierrez, Luly Valencia-Glenn

Diversity

In 2000, DoZa Ana Branch Community College (DABCC) received a grant from the American Association of Community Colleges Broadening Horizons through Service Learning program to develop service learning in southern New Mexico. Poised on the United States- Mexico border, DABCC serves a population that includes 40% colonia residents. Colonias are communities within 150 miles of the border that lack basic infrastructure such as paved roads, water and sewage treatment facilities, and adequate housing. DABCC has developed community partnerships with colonia residents and with agencies that provide services within the colonias. In their presentation, a DABCC team will describe service learning …

Persuading Students To Care: Eugene Lang's Program Aims To Prod Colleges Into Encouraging Civic Involvement, Jeffrey R. Young

Special Topics, General

Democracy in America is at risk, and colleges are not doing enough about it, says Eugene M. Lang, a philanthropist known for tackling large problems in education. Colleges may say they encourage good citizenship, he says, but their efforts are often "random," and students are increasingly tuning out of the democratic process.

Colorado Department Of Education Service-Learning: Evaluation Report, Rmc Research Corporation

Project Summaries

In 2001, the state of Colorado received three federal grants to provide service-learning opportunities for students. Service-Learning Colorado at the Colorado Department of Education, in turn, distributed funds to a total 27 grantees. There were three types of grantees: Community, Higher Education, School Partnership (CHESP), School- or District-Based grantees, and Community-Based grantees.

Mentoring Youth: A Service-Learning Course Within A College Of Nursing, Janis C. Childs, Susan B. Sepples, Kimberly A. Moody

Higher Education

Faculty at the University of Southern Maine College of Nursing and Health Care Professions developed a service-learning course that connected students and faculty with at-risk children in a local community. Nursing students, with faculty supervision and support, developed, implemented, and evaluated interventions to reduce risk factors and increase protective factors to build and strengthen the participants' resiliency.

Students enrolled in the service-learning course worked in the community where they gained an understanding of what it was like for children and adolescents to live in an impoverished community setting with disorganized family units and weak community support. The students learned to …

Civic Engagement And American Democracy, Richard Erdmann

Civic Engagement

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of the United States during the 1830’s and his observations say much about democracy in general, democracy in the United States of the 1830’s and democracy today. His greatest fear for the United States was of apathy on the part of its citizens. He saw individualism and material wealth as potent contributors to the United States but also as potential distracters. He felt that the greatest threat existed because democracy might work so well that citizens would become apathetic. At this point the omnipotence of the majority would cause the democratic freedoms to slip away almost …

Integrating Service-Learning Into Watershed Management Programs: Opportunities And Challenges, Tamim Younos, Raymond De Leon, Christine Lewicki

Special Topics, General

The objective of this article is to open a dialogue on integrating service-learning into community based watershed management programs and to discuss opportunities and challenges that a service-learning program presents to universities and communities. The article presents the concept and definition of service-learning, and arguments concerning why institutions of higher education and university faculty and students should be involved with community based watershed management programs.

A Status Report On Community Service Learning In The California State University For The 2001-2002 Academic Year, Season Eckardt

Higher Education

Community service and service learning arc long-standing touchstones in the mission and purpose of the California State University since the first campus was founded in 1857. Partnerships between local communities and CSU faculty and students make numerous goals achievable: they improve the quality of life across California, promote faculty research, and support CSU programs- all while students learn the value and satisfaction that comes from contributing to society. Policymakers and leaders of higher education have expressed renewed interest in utilizing service learning as a vehicle to instill civic values in students. All these elements have contributed to the profound advancement …

Abundant Beautification: An Effective Service-Learning Project For Students With Emotional Or Behavioral Disorders, Laura M. Frey

Disabilities

• Can service learning provide a structure for students to access skills that will transition into future community living success?
• Can students with emotional or behavioral disorders work successfully with a community-based partner to implement projects that meet community needs?
• Can these students realize the connection between community needs and their classroom academic activities?
• Can students with emotional or behavioral disorders develop a sense of caring not only for themselves, but for others?

Read this article to find answers to these questions regarding the efficacy of service learning for students with emotional or behavioral disorders (see box, …

Making The Case For Social And Emotional Learning And Service-Learning, Linda Fredericks

Service Learning, General

This ECS Issue Brief provides an overview and description of both social and emotional learning (SEL) and service-learning (S-L) as tools to improve the lives and academic performance of students. It describes how the two practices arc interrelated and the research evidence that supports the expanded use of both practices in the classroom. Also provided are descriptions of the essential clements required of successful SEL and S-L programs, examples of such successful programs that are in existence today, and a discussion of state activities and experiences. Lastly, the brief discusses a series of likely challenges that education leaders implementing SEL …

Integrating Service-Learning Into Dietetics And Nutrition Education, Jennifer M. Chabot, David H. Holben

Service Learning, General

This article presents a review of the service-learning literature as a foundation for a discussion on integrating service-learning into dietetics and nutrition education. The purposes of this review are to (1) define service-learning, (2) discuss how service-learning can enhance dietetics and nutrition education programs, (3) explain principles and best practices fur integrating service-learning into dietetics and nutrition curricula, and ( 4) outline practical tips for orienting students for this experience and establishing sites for service-learning activities. The information shared has pedagogical implications and is transferable to any dietetics and nutrition education program.

Making The Case For Social And Emotional Learning And Service-Learning, Education Commission Of The States

Service Learning, General

This ECS Issue Brief provides an overview and description of both social and emotional learning (SEL) and service-learning (S-L) as tools to improve the lives and academic performance of students. It describes how the two practices are interrelated and the research evidence that supports the expanded use of both practices in the classroom. Also provided are descriptions of the essential elements required of successful SEL and S-L programs, examples of such successful programs that are in existence today, and a discussion of state activities and experiences. Lastly, the brief discusses a series of likely challenges that education leaders implementing SEL …

The Impact Of Service-Learning On Meap: A Large Scale Study Of Michigan Learn And Serve Grantees, Rmc Research Corporation

Project Summaries

Service-learning is a teaching strategy that involves students in service projects that are connected to the curriculum. Service-learning has its roots in the ideas of philosophers, such as Piaget and Dewey, who argued that students learn more when they are actively involved in their own learning and when learning has a distinct purpose (Anderson, Kinsley, Negroni, & Price, 1991; Conrad & Hedin, 1991; Kinsley, 1997). A body of evidence is building in support of the positive academic outcomes of service-learning (see Billig, 2000 for a review). However, the conclusions that can be drawn from many of these research studies are …

Civic Engagement And Service-Learning With Young Children: Lntergenerational Peacemaking Projects: By The Students, Volunteers And Staff Of Peace Games, Education Commission Of The States

Intergenerational

Violence, in all of its forms, continues to make learning difficult, if not impossible, for a substantial number of children. While high-profile incidences such as the Columbine High School shootings grab the public's attention, it is the daily difficulties of bullies, intimidation and fear that affect students in all schools (Twemlow, 2001 ).

Roadmap To Civic Engagement (Adapted For Washington Service Corps), Larry Fletch

Guides

Service-Learning Northwest partnered with Washington Service Corps (WSC), a statewide AmeriCorps program, to implement the Roadmap to Civic Engagement program in its 2002-2003 pilot year.

Service-Learning Northwest (SLNW), a program of Educational Service District 112, was established to meet the training, technical assistance and resource needs of educators, students, youth and community-based organizations throughout the service-learning and service communities. SLNW promotes service-learning excellence through the development of high quality service-learning practices and tools for success. Please visit our web site for information about products and services offered by Service-Learning Northwest at www.servicelearningnw.esd112.org.

Community Needs Assessment Guide, Cesar Chavez Foundation

Guides

To ensure students have a clear understanding of the importance of a community needs assessment, gauge their understanding of “community” and “need.”

Inclusive Service Learning: A Training Guide For K-12 Teachers, Hampshire Educational Collaborative

Guides

Designed to be used in conjunction with the video FROM "YOU CAN'T" TO "YOU CAN" SERVICE LEARNING FOR STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES