Education Commons^™

The Impact Of Service-Learning On General Chemistry Ii Students At The University Of Nebraska At Omaha, Kayla Rud

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Service-learning has been shown to enhance academic and leadership skills while promoting community engagement and exposing students to different career opportunities (Esson et al., 2005). While the benefits of service-learning courses are clear, few STEM courses include service-learning components (Esson et al., 2005). Here, students in a totally online 2nd semester UNO chemistry course completed a service-learning project where they remotely led a live, inquiry-based STEM activity for Girl Scouts. To quantify the impact of service-learning on professional development, future career plans, and future volunteerism, a series of pre and post surveys were administered. Paired-sample t-tests revealed a statistically significant …

The Intersection Of Education And Service: A Phenomenological Study, Jonathan Bryant

Doctor of Education Dissertations

This phenomenological study examined the experiences of 19 former high school service participants. This study explored the perspectives and opinions of each participant regarding the quality aspects of their service experiences and the impact of their service on college, career, and life trajectory. Additionally, participants discussed their motivation to serve initially and over time. This study explored the history of service in America, discussed the impacts of service, and examined the Vroom Theory of Motivation. In-depth focus group interviews were conducted with 19 high school graduates to gain their perspectives on their service experiences. These interviews were transcribed to analyze …

Managing Students As Volunteers: Community Organizations’ Perspectives Of Service-Learning Placements, Bradley Wolfe

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This qualitative study examines how students are managed as volunteers in community organizations. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eleven professionals in Southern Minnesota who oversee student-volunteers as a part of their position. The research covers the roles of student-volunteers in community organizations, the community benefits of student labor, and the management models used for supervising students. The results demonstrate different models used to manage students as volunteer, which vary by the depth of the volunteer commitment. Under all models, the sample of participants attested to an overall benefit of students as volunteers in their respective organizations.

"No One Is Gonna Tell Us We Can't Do This": The Development Of Agency In Student-Initiated Community Engagement, Shuli A. Archer

Doctoral Dissertations

By its simplest definition, service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) connect work in the community and reflection on that work with credit-bearing academic courses. SLCE has been critiqued for, among other things, an incomplete consideration of power dynamics, and scholars and practitioners have recently expressed a desire to reinforce service-learning as primarily promoting agency, or the capacity to make change in society. Student-initiated community engagement programs offer a unique perspective and context to study agency. These programs, much like student-initiated retention projects, provide spaces where students take the lead in curriculum development, community partner relationship development, and program administration. Using Emirbayer …

The Unheard Stories Of Service-Learners: An Exploratory Study Of The Assumptions Of Race, Identity, And Privilege Within The Service-Learning Experience, J. Faith Krefft

Community Engagement Student Work

Service-learning has become a powerful pedagogical practice in Higher Education. Yet many of its practices have been premised on the idea that participants are white and serving a community unlike their own. Research suggests that the perspectives and identities of students of a diverse background participating in service-learning experiences may be unheard and/or misunderstood. Through a qualitative exploratory study, this study examined the perspective of nonwhite students. Four students from two higher education institutions selected to participate in a set of longitudinal, semi-structured, in-depth interviews in order to better understand their perspectives and experiences in their service-learning field site. Service-learning …

Critical Social Justice Theory In Action: A Practitioner Inquiry Into The Service-Learning Capstone Experience, Julie A. Jaynes

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Service-learning pedagogy can be found in K-12 schools and higher education classrooms across the country. Those programs and courses exist on a complex spectrum from charity to social justice; research presented here documents my efforts as a service-learning teacher to better align the program’s senior capstone class to the teachings from critical social justice theory. I used a practitioner inquiry approach to address the problem of an epistemology in the research process that recreated systems of oppression by excluding the knowledge and voices of the minoritized groups who are impacted by the issues being researched. My inquiry centers my students’ …

Building Stronger Communities: The Reciprocity Between University, Student, And Community Through Service-Learning, Jennifer Ellen Goff

Human Movement Studies & Special Education Theses & Dissertations

This three-paper format dissertation explored the impact of service-learning on three key constituents: the university, university students conducting the service, and the community receiving the service. Paper one quantitatively explored the impact of service-learning on university students’ perspective through the use of end of year service-learning course evaluations. Students self-reported their outcomes due to participation as it related to professional skills, communication skills, academic learning, values clarification, citizenship skills, and quality indicators of their service-learning program. Paper one also explored if there was a difference between two types of service, direct (e.g., participate directly with the community) and indirect (e.g., …

Perspectives Of International Students Performing Service-Learning In The United States: A Case Study With Amizade, Suzanne Beth Unger

Teaching & Learning Theses & Dissertations

Past research has demonstrated consequences of service-learning and impacts of service-learning experiences on students and community members in domestic and international settings. Researchers have this topic in developing countries; however, few have studied international students' perspectives on doing service-learning in a developed country. This qualitative study aims to determine how students recognize their lives, and lives of community members in need are impacted as a result of their Amizade Global Service-Learning program in the United States. The investigation employs Cone and Harris' (1996) conceptual framework of service-learning to examine interpersonal, sociocultural, and psychological components of the experience. Data were collected …

Collaboration To Institutionalize Service-Learning In Higher Education Organizations: The Relationship Between The Structures Of Academic And Student Affairs, Joanne A. Dreher

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Higher education organizations are distinguished by a structural divide between academic affairs and student affairs. Specific to this separation is the divide between the formal curriculum created and managed by faculty and the informal 'hidden' curriculum developed and delivered to students by student affairs professionals. This divide prompts questions about the role of structure and the cultures that are reinforced by those structures to influence collaboration to integrate new pedagogies such as service-learning.

Case study design was used to analyze three institutions in New England to understand the influence of organizational structures to institutionalize service-learning and to determine the degree …