Education Commons^™

Engaging Students In Community, Sheena Steckl

Celebration of Teaching

Vincent Tinto’s Schema for Dropout From College, posits “it is the individual's integration into the academic and social systems of the college that most directly relates to his continuance in that college” (96). I have sought to improve student integration through group-centric, community-engaged learning classes, where we spend nearly half our class time serving in the community.

These community-engaged learning courses entail a fair amount of group work. Students are assigned in groups that serve together, do in-class group assignments together, and work on multifaceted group projects. Their time spent outside the classroom serving together, be it driving to …

Data: Y-Serve Participants Notes, Yoshihiko Ariizumi

Spiritual Proficiency

This data of 500 plus notes originally hand-written by the participants in the Y-Serve programs is a great resource to know their experiences in service learning. The compiler wishes that this document assists those who write essays or do extended research projects to illuminate and promote service learning in our educational settings.

Preparing For A Short-Term Volunteer Experience, Beth Sullivan

Occupational Therapy Collection

Occupational Therapy (OT) practitioners who volunteer for short-term medical service trips in developing countries face many challenges, including gaining an appreciation of that country's culture (values, economy, political, and medical systems) and understanding how these factors influence provision of OT services.

As OT practitioners, we "contribute to the global health of society and individuals by enabling the right to engage in meaningful, purposeful occupations" (World Federation of Occupational Therapists, n.d., para 4). The frequency of short-term medical service trips (STMST) undertaken by persons living in high income countries to low income countries is increasing (Sykes, 2014). Despite this fact, systematic …

In Service Together: University Students And Incarcerated Youth Collaborate For Change, Deborah Smith Arthur, Jamie Valentine

University Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Through the lens of two courses at Portland State University (PSU), this article addresses critical service learning pedagogy as transformational for both incarcerated youth and university students. In one course, PSU students share a writing/art workshop with youth in juvenile detention though The Beat Within (https://www.thebeatwithin.org). Another course brings together PSU students and young men incarcerated at MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in an inside/out course format (https://www.insideoutcenter.org). Working collaboratively, students have developed a variety of service-learning projects. This article explores the impact of critical service learning courses on both incarcerated young people and university students.

Integrating Faculty Led Service Learning Training To Quantify Height Of Natural Resources From A Spatial Science Perspective, Daniel Unger, David Kulhavy, Kai Busch-Peterson, I-Kuai Hung

Faculty Publications

Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture (ATCOFA) faculty members were trained how to integrate service learning activities within senior level classes at Stephen F. Austin State University (SFASU) in Nacogdoches, Texas. The service learning training, taught under the acronym Mentored Undergraduate Scholarship (MUGS), involved meeting with fellow faculty members over the course of an academic year during the fall semester to first learn how to incorporate service learning activities in a senior level class followed by its incorporation into a class the following spring semester. The service learning model was applied to students in GIS 420, a senior level …

Best Practices Developing Service Learning Protocol For Hospitality Administration, Mary Olle, Chay Runnels, Gina Fe Causin, Todd Barrios

Faculty Publications

Developing Service Learning Protocol for students in the Hospitality Administration program at Stephen F. Austin State University provides an opportunity for students to experience these values such as networking, commitment, and building self-confidence. In 2015 SFA Hospitality Administration faculty made a decision to institutionalize service learning throughout their program. This presentation discusses its implementation.

Senioritis -- Or An Opportunity For Growth?, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Walking into the kitchen, she spots the community college acceptance letter on top of a stack of mail. Early in December, the Marine Corps notifies him that basic training starts in six months. She's dreamed about attending her mom's alma mater for the last few years, and admissions has responded positively. The auto shop where he's had an afterschool job since junior year has just promised full-time employment beginning two weeks after graduation.

Now what?

This question concerns me as an educator of K-12 and higher education.

Enhancing The Team Experience In Service Learning Courses, Audrey Falk

Education Faculty Publications

Service learning is pervasive in higher education today, with 31 percent of students at Campus Compact member schools engaging in service activities (Campus Compact, 2009) and universities’ missions and strategic planning documents increasingly aimed at developing engaged citizens. Service learning has many potential benefits for college students; among those benefits is the opportunity to develop and practice teamwork skills. The present paper describes the strategies used in a team-based service learning course to support positive team experiences for students.

How Porous Are The Walls That Separate Us?: Transformative Service-Learning, Women’S Incarceration, And The Unsettled Self, Coralynn V. Davis

Faculty Journal Articles

In this article, we refine a politics of thinking from the margins by exploring a pedagogical model that advances transformative notions of service learning as social justice teaching. Drawing on a recent course we taught involving both incarcerated women and traditional college students, we contend that when communication among differentiated and stratified parties occurs, one possible result is not just a view of the other but also a transformation of the self and other. More specifically, we suggest that an engaged feminist praxis of teaching incarcerated women together with college students helps illuminate the porous nature of fixed markers that …

Innovative Education In Agroecology: Experiential Learning For A Sustainable Agriculture, C.A. Francis, N. Jordan, P. Porter, T.A. Breland, G. Lieblein, L. Salomonsson, N. Sriskandarajah, M. Wiedenhoeft, Robert Dehaan, I. Braden, V. Langer

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

The transdisciplinary field of agroecology provides a platform for experiential learning based on an expanded vision of research on sustainable farming and food systems and the application of results in creating effective learning landscapes for students. With increased recognition of limitations of fossil fuels, fresh water, and available farmland, educators are changing focus from strategies to reach maximum yields to those that feature resource use efficiency and resilience of production systems in a less benign climate. To help students deal with complexity and uncertainty and a wide range of biological and social dimensions of the food challenge, a whole-systems approach …

A Case Study Of Student Engagement In Collaborative Group Learning In A Blended Community Based (Service) Learning Module, John G. Mcgarrigle

Research Theses

Abstract: A participatory action research case study employed mixed methods to examine student collaboration and engagement in a Community Based (Service) learning module. A quasi experimental testing of Coates (2007) typology of student engagement found low agreement between students and lecturers in assigning the terms, passive, intense, independent or collaborative to student postings to discussion fora. Evidence from this case study found greater student collaboration in discussion fora when linked to practical course activity. Qualitative analysis of discussion threads using conversation analysis provided evidence for collaboration in deeper knowledge construction when supported by lecturers’ contributions. Discourse analysis examined interviews with …

Models Of Interdisciplinary Research And Service Learning At Hope College, Aaron A. Best, Matthew Dejongh, Amanda J. Barton, Jeff R. Brown, Christopher C. Barney

Publications

"Children love to explore the world around them. In doing so they are not aware of disciplinary boundaries or even of disciplines. They move freely from watching ants (biology) to building structures (engineering) to counting rocks (mathematics and geology) to seeing what things dissolve in water (chemistry). Only as they go to school do they learn that humans divide up the way we learn about the universe and start to think within disciplinary boundaries. In doing so, those children, who are now us, lose the ability to think broadly and use the insights of various ways of thinking to solve …

A Service Learning Model: Meeting Ncate Standards Through Educational Technology, Maria Lizano-Dimare

Education Faculty Publications

Service learning can be described as learning experiences that serve the needs of a specific community and enable students to draw meaningful connections between theory and practice. Through service learning, students observe and model the behaviors, attitudes, and emotional reactions of others. It is important that education programs are built upon NCATE standards in order to ensure quality. This service learning model is based on an undergraduate level educational technology course. Through their participation in Introduction to Computers in Education, future teachers gain practical experience in a school-based environment that prepares them in the use of educational technology for …

The National Society For Experiential Education Research Collaborative, National Society For Experiential Education

Service Learning, General

The National Society for Experiential Education is embarking on a new endeavor to advance our understanding of how experiential education impacts learning, teaching, and schooling in various contexts and communities. This endeavor, called the NSEE Research Collaborative, will convene national and local researchers to collaborate on a large-scale, multifaceted research study that will investigate various issues in experiential education.

A Glipse Of A New Experiential Learning Theory Paradigm, John S. Duley

Service Learning, General

A pseudo NSIEE Occasional Paper printed as memorabilia for the Wingspread Service Learning History Project Conference, December 2-4, 1995. This was first presented as the closing Keynote address at the 1980 NSIEE conference in San Francisco. It was reworked on the basis of correspondence with Bob Sigmon and conversations with other illuminaries. I reworked it in its present form in June 1988 and submitted it to the then editor of Occasional Papers. For probably several good reasons of which I am not aware, it was not published. So on this occasion I have taken the liberty as a former editor …

Field Experience And Cooperative Education; Similarities And Differences, Joyce K. Fletcher

Service Learning, General

Of all of the benefits associated with experiential education, those related to student development are of the most interest to educators. Those of us who work with students do not need to be convinced of the positive impact work experience has on participants. Anecdotally we share with one another our success stories - stories of individual students who have grown, matured, gained self-confidence or a new sense of direction and purpose because of exposure to what we like to call the real world. Yet, we recognize that these outcomes are not guaranteed, and that in fact, not all students achieve …

Applications Of Developmental Theory To The Design And Conduct Of Quality Field Experience Programs: Exercises For Educators, Michele Whitman, Albert Erdynast

Service Learning, General

Much has been made in experiential learning circles of the implications of empirical findings in developmental psychology for the formulation of a theoretically convincing rationale for field experience education programs of every kind. Of particular significance has been the identification of cognitive structural stages of intellectual, moral, social and ego development through which individuals have been shown to progress--structural transformations of the individual's intra- and interpersonal capacities which closely mirror the traditionally articulated goals of higher education for students' growth. Even as such concepts have been advanced, however, practitioners have voiced persistent reservations about the theory's seeming elitism, the values …