Service Learning Commons^™

Measuring Progress; Evaluating The Strengthening Of Communities, Phil Bartle

Evaluation/Reflection

Our goal is stated; we want to strengthen communities. We feel that we have a methodology to do so, but how can we know when we have succeeded, or to what extent?

What we may mean by the above question, is, "How do we measure the strengthening of communities that we claim we are doing?" Put in other ways, "What do we mean by strengthening communities, by increasing their capacities, by empowering them?" We can use these three (1 empowering, 2 strengthening, 3 capacity building) interchangeably, although one or another may be more acceptable to different people. …

Evaluation Methods That Build Quality Into K-16 Service-Learning Programs, L. Richard Bradley

Evaluation/Reflection

This document covers: What Service-Learning is; Steps in the Evaluation Process; Initial Conditions for Successful Service-Learning Program Implementation; Service-Learning Evaluation 101; Service-Learning Evaluation 201; Service-Learning Evaluation 301; Comparison of Evaluation Strategies in Relation to Service-Learning; and List of Surveys and Instruments used by the Four-District Consortium.

Methodological Problems In Evaluating Service Learning Projects, David A. Payne

Evaluation/Reflection

The ever increasing use of "service learning" as an adjunct to the ongoing instructional programs in public schools and higher education has challenged the conduct of both formal and informal evaluations. This article considers threats to internal validity in evaluating "learn and serve" projects with particular attention to data collection design and instrumentation. Mixedmethods designs are likely to be most effective, particularly when the intent is to focus on valueadded assessment, and there is considerable variability in the nature and extent of implementation of learn and serve activities.

Bringing The Gap Between Service And Learning, Julie Hatcher, Robert G. Bringle

Evaluation/Reflection

Learning theorists recognize that not all experiences result in learning, particularly discipline-based learning. John Dewey called for education to be deeply rooted in experience (1916), yet he acknowledged that experience in and of itself is not always educative (1933). Experiences often create controversy, and if the controversy is not reflected upon, it can be a misleading, even harmful experience, which produces a lack of sensitivity and responsiveness in the learner (Dewey 1933). Although an encounter has the potential to develop key perceptions that foster personal growth, it is only when the experience is thoughtfully considered and analyzed that generalizations are …

Environmental Action Learn And Serve Program (Ealsp) Evaluation Report, Pioneer Resa

Evaluation/Reflection

The Pioneer RESA's Environmental Action Learn and Serve Program (EALSP) was designed to enhance middle school math and science programs. This enhancement was accomplished through the application of classroom instruction to real-life situations and the involvement of students in active community service. Begun in the 1994-1995 school year, EALSP has had three highly successful years of providing meaningful service learning projects, extensive curriculum development, and essential professional development activities for 25 schools in 14 systems, 50 teachers, and over 2,000 students.

The Use Of Grand Assessments In K-12 Service-Learning Research, Andrew Furco

Evaluation/Reflection

Findings from most studies on the impacts of service-learning on K-12 students tend to be based on one assessment too/focusing on one construct (e.g., self-esteem, civic participation, etc.). While conventional research wisdom tells us that this approach is more statistically stable, it does not seem to be adequate for studying service-learning programs. Both service-learning and experiential education researchers face several dilemmas in determining the effects of service-learning activities on students' educational development. The idiosyncratic nature of the program activities, the lack of well-tested assessment instruments, the confounding influences on students learning, etc., make service-learning research a challenging and difficult endeavor. …

An Empirical Assessment Of Self-Esteem Enhancement In A Challenge Service-Learning Program, Jianjun Wang, Betty Greathouse, Veronica M. Falcinella

Evaluation/Reflection

Empirical data collected from a total of 187 elementary and secondary school students were analyzed in this article to assess enhancement of student self-esteem in a service-learning program. The elementary school students were split into treatment and control groups based on their involvement in a greenhouse construction project. At the high school level, two experimental groups were each characterized by Zoophonics tutoring and student service to the Delano Historical Society. Control groups were identified equivalent to these treatment groups. Coopersmith self-esteem inventory and its school-academic subscales were adopted to assess the effect of each service-learning project. While no significant gender …

Massachusetts Service Alliance Site Visit Monitoring Tool, Massachusetts Service Alliance

Evaluation/Reflection

Site Visit Monitoring Tool

Reflection Activities For The College Classroom, Julie A. Hatcher, Robert G. Bringle

Evaluation/Reflection

As educators committed to strengthening the integration of service into academic study, we have provided this booklet of reflection activities as our first attempt to consolidate the collective wisdom on reflection activities that can be used in college classrooms.

Evaluation Of Learn And Serve America, Higher Education: First Year Report, Volume I, Maryann Jacobi Gray, Sandra Geschwind, Elizabeth Henegan Ondaatje, Abby Robyn, Stephen P. Klein, Linda J. Sax, Alexander W. Astin, Helen S. Astin, Tessa Kaganoff, Kathy Rosenblatt

Evaluation/Reflection

This report presents evaluation results for the first year of the Learn and Serve America, Higher Education (LSAHE) initiative, sponsored by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNS). It addresses impacts of LSAHE on communities, higher education institutions, and service providers.

Reflections On Evaluation Of Service-Learning Programs, Maryann Jacobi Gray

Evaluation/Reflection

Somewhere between a thorn in the side and a bloom on the rose of service-learning is evaluation. Whatever one's personal attitude toward evaluation, pressures to demonstrate effectiveness are increasing for practitioners and proponents of service-learning at the postsecondary level. This article describes the factors driving interest in assessing program outcomes and reviews some of the challenges facing evaluators of service-learning programs. Although this discussion focuses on the higher education environment, many of the principles examined are also applicable to high school and middle school programs.

Developing Reflective Learners: Serendipity And Synergy At Wheaton College, Hannah Goldberg, Daniel Golden, Victoria Mcgillin

Evaluation/Reflection

For the past decade, Wheaton College, a small liberal arts institution located in Norton, Massachusetts, has been creating, refining, and integrating a range of initiatives designed to develop students into active and reflective learners. Some of these initiatives grew out of explicit institutional commitments to teaching and learning innovation, while others were in fact happy accidents of circumstance, or situations where an individual interesting program idea took hold, spread into other units of the College, and was itself transformed in the process.

Evaluating Service-Learning Programs, Andrew Furco

Evaluation/Reflection

What we know about service-learning programs regarding impacts on students, communities, institutions:
• little systematic data analysis has been done;
• most existing findings are anecdotal;
• findings that exist are narrow in scope and are typically nongeneralizeable to other programs;
• most studies on service-learning have focused on the impact of service on student (service provider) development;
• there are a growing number of service-learning evaluations that are assessing the impacts of service on communities (service recipients);
• assessments of the impacts of service-learning on institutions are negligible
• regarding impacts on students, we know that service can impact …

Measuring Program Outcomes: A Practical Approach, United Way Of America

Evaluation/Reflection

If yours is like most human service agencies or youth- and family-serving organizations, you regularly report on how much money you receive, how many staff and volunteers you have, and what they do in your programs. You know how many individuals participate in your programs, how many hours you spend serving them, and how many brochures or classes or counseling sessions you produce. In other words, you document program inputs, activities, and outputs.

Journal Writing In Service-Learning: Lessons From A Mentoring Projects, Martha De Acosta

Evaluation/Reflection

Journals contribute to learning by focusing students' attention on elements of their community service and by providing a quiet space for reflection on their actions. Writing helps students to engage in observation, questioning, speculation, and self-awareness, and to gain an overview of their community service. Lessons about enhancing the quality of students' journal writing in service-leaming are discussed.

Assessment Of A Service-Learning Programmme, Chris Walsh

Evaluation/Reflection

In the summer, 1994, NSEE Quarterly, I described the design and setting up of a new service-learning course at Roehampton Institute, London, England. The innovatory nature of this course was determined by its academic availability in the undergraduate curriculum. In this article, I want to examine the assessment methods and criteria. Why was it decided to provide a rigorous system of assessment and to assess the reflective work produced rather than directly assess the agency experience?

The Minnesota Americorps-Youth Works Evaluation Plan, Robert D. Shumer, Jane Maland

Evaluation/Reflection

Passage of the Youth Works bill is important legislation. It brings Minnesota to the forefront of the national service movement and sets standards for other states to follow. Because Youth Works leads the nation in involving young people in service to their community ad their state, the evaluation design also reflects the innovative spirit of the legislation. The state evaluation design incorporates the best of other evaluative studies of service programs and promotes new processes which reflect the intent of the legislation.

The state evaluation of the AmeriCorps-Youth Works Programs promotes programmatic self-evaluation, while it links together state and federal …

Students' Reflection On Community Service Learning, Jay D. Anderson

Evaluation/Reflection

Internships are a rapidly expanding educational technique to enhance students' ability to learn. Internships permit and encourage students to experience the real world while receiving academic credit. Seekonk High School in Seekonk, Massachusetts, has an internship program for high school seniors called Independent Study. It allows students to leave school one day a week for the school year and volunteer within the community. Students receive academic credit for their participation in community service learning.

Preflection: A Strategy For Enhancing Reflection, Diana Falk

Evaluation/Reflection

"Preflection" is a strategy designed as a tool to enhance and enrich the reflection process. It is actually a reflective session that is held prior to the service experience. Students are encouraged to imagine what the experience will be like and to express any feelings they might have as they anticipate their involvement. Comments are recorded and are reviewed with the students after the service has been completed. Being able to look back on their pre-service thoughts and feelings and compare and contrast them to the reality of the actual experience has the effect of promoting and focusing discussion, and …

Evaluation System For Experiential Education Programs: Evaluation Guide, Andrew Furco

Evaluation/Reflection

This guide contains: ESEE Description;Timeline; Program Goal & Objectives Forms; Student Pre-Test (designed for each institution); Journal Questions: Faculty Guide & Student Handouts; Student Field Placement Form; Student Focus Group Interview Protocol; Faculty Focus Group Interview Protocol; Community Agency Focus Group Interview Protocol; Community Agency Survey (designed for each institution); Student Post-Test (designed for each institution); and ESEE Checklist.

Reflection As A Tool For Turning Service Experiences Into Learning Experiences, James Toole, Pamela Toole

Evaluation/Reflection

No abstract provided.

Critical Reflection, Richard Battistoni, Beverly Roberts

Evaluation/Reflection

In this workshop, we wanted to convey the importance of tying critical reflection activities to the learning objectives of the service experience and/or course. We started by asking participants to define critical reflection and then to list some common learning objectives associated with service-learning courses and co-curricular service. Finally, participants described many of the activities they use with their participants and students. The result is a thorough list of activities that service-learning practitioners find effective in achieving their course objectives.

Report Of The Evaluation Task Force, Corporation For National And Community Service

Evaluation/Reflection

The mission of the Corporation for National Service is:

To engage Americans of all ages and backgrounds in community-based service. This service will address the nation's educational, public safety, human and environmental needs in order to achieve direct and demonstrable results. In fulfilling its mission, the Corporation will foster civic responsibility, strengthen the ties that bind us together as a people and provide educational opportunity for those who make a substantial commitment to service.

Service-Learning Reflections: Update Of Service-Learning In Pennsylvania, Carl I. Fertman, Irving H. Buchen, Joanne Long, Louis J. White

Evaluation/Reflection

The Pennsylvania Service-Learning Resource and Evaluation Network based at the University of Pittsburgh supports service-learning programs.The network provides information, support, resources,and guidance. Its philosophy is to work with people by offering systematic data of a wide variety of types that help inform them about what they care about. The primary goal of the network is to help schools and community-based organizations to evaluate their service-learning programs.

In Service Of Service-Learning: Framing An Evaluation For Effective Programs, Steven Schuman

Evaluation/Reflection

In 1991 at the Wingspread Conference (Giles, Honnet, and Migliore, 1991) two broad questions emerged to help define and frame the evaluation of service-learning programs:

1) What was the effect of service-learning on intellectual, moral, and citizenship development of participants?

2) What was the effect of service-learning on the advancement of social institutions and democracy?

Learn And Serve America: Higher Education Evaluation Requirements, Learn And Serve America

Evaluation/Reflection

Every program that receives Learn and Serve America: Higher Education funding should establish:

• a set of annual objectives
• a system for using "customer" feedback to improve program quality
• a system for collecting additional descriptive and demographic data

Measuring Citizenship Project, Walt Whitman Center For The Culture And Politics Of Democracy

Evaluation/Reflection

Issuing out of the success of the Civic Education and Community Service Program at Rutgers University, in 1992 the Walt Whitman Center for the Culture and Politics of Democracy embarked on a measuring citizenship project to explore the relationship between community, citizenship, and service learning. The Project's main goal is to develop a working, empirical instrument that will measure the impact of service learning and other forms of civic experience on citizenship. This civic literacy test will determine how service learning and other civic experiences, such as jury service or military service, effect an individual's perceptions and commitments to his …

Community Service Program: Evaluation Information System Manual, The Commission On National And Community Service

Evaluation/Reflection

In 1990 Congress established the Commission on National and Community Service (CNCS) under the National and Community Service Act. The mandate of the Act is to test innovative and model programs to "renew the ethic of civic responsibility" through service to the community.

Curriculum Workshop, Robert D. Shumer

Evaluation/Reflection

This is an introductory workshop on developing curriculum using a student-centered, community-based approach. It is founded largely on the philosophy of John Dewey and represents an approach produced at the Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development. It has been implemented in many school districts across the country in the 1970s and 1980s, and is still a very viable approach to curriculum development in the 1990s. It is not specifically limited to service-learning programs; it is applicable to any program where students expect to earn academic credit for learning which occurs outside the classroom. It is intended for use …

The Case For Participatory Evaluation, J. Bradley Cousins, Lorna M. Earl

Evaluation/Reflection

Participatory evaluation is presented as an extension of the stakeholder-based model with a focus on enhancing evaluation utilization through primary users’ increased depth and range of participation in the applied research process. The approach is briefly described and then justified from theoretical and empirical bases. The literature on organizational learning provides theoretical support for participatory evaluation stemming primarily from the view that knowledge is socially constructed and cognitive systems and memories are developed and shared by organization members. Twenty-six recent empirical studies were found to support an organizational learning justification of the model. Studies were classified into one of six …