Principles of Good Practice
in Combining Service and Learning

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Credit in academic courses is assigned to students for the demonstration of academic learning. It should be no different in community service learning courses. When community service is integrated into an academic course, the course credit is assigned for both the customary academic learning as well as for the utilization of the community learning toward realizing the course objectives.

 

2. Do Not Compromise Academic Rigor

The additional workload imposed by community service assignments may be compensated by an additional credit but not by lowering academic learning expectations. Adding a service component, in fact, may enhance the rigor of a course. In addition to having to master the academic material, students must also learn how to learn from a community experience and merge that learning with academic learning. These intellectual activities, if constructed correctly, are commensurate with rigorous academic standards.

 

3. Set Learning Goals for Students

By integrating the community with the classroom, there occurs a multiplication of possible learning paradigms (e.g. experiential learning, inductive learning, participatory action research) and learning topics (e.g. the community, the public good). Nevertheless, it is crucial to have a clear sense of the course objectives when designing the service learning component.

 

4. Establish Criteria for the Selection of Community Service Placements

There are three essentials to consider here:

 

5. Provide Educationally Sound Mechanisms to Facilitate the Community-based Learning

Course assignments and learning formats must be carefully developed to facilitate the students' learning from their community service experiences. Experience, as a learning format, in and of itself, does not consummate learning, nor does mere written description of one's service activities. Discussions, presentations, and journal and paper assignments that provoke analysis of service experiences in the context of the course objectives are necessary.

 

6. Provide Supports for Students to Learn how to Engage in Community-based Learning

Acquiring knowledge from the community and utilizing it on behalf of course objectives is a paradigm for which many students are under-prepared. Faculty can support students in their efforts to realize the potential of community-based learning by helping them obtain the necessary skills and/or by providing examples of successful projects.

 

7. Minimize the Distinction between the Student's Community Learning Role and the Classroom Learning Role

Typically, classrooms and communities are very different environments, each requiring students to assume a different role as a learner. Classrooms generally provide a high level of learning direction and structure. In contrast, community-based learning tends to necessitate greater leadership and initiative on the part of the student. A mechanism is needed that will provide learning direction for the students in the community (e.g. community agency staff serving as an adjunct instructor). The more one can make consistent the student's learning role in the classroom with her/his learning role in the community, the better the chances that the learning potential within each context will be realized.

 

8. Rethink the Faculty Instructional Role

The role of the educator must take a less conventional form in service learning. Rather than emphasizing the dissemination of information, the educator must focus more on being a facilitator and guide to student learning. This means that some course content must be sacrificed.

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1. Explicitly connects the service component to course objectives

2. Engages students in activities for the public good which meet real needs of the community

3. Provides structured opportunities for students to reflect critically on their service experience

4. Allows for those with special needs to define those needs

5. Clarifies the responsibilities of each student and organization involved

6. Matches service providers and service needs through a process that recognizes changing circumstances.

7. Expects genuine, active and sustained organizational commitment

8. Includes training, supervision, monitoring, support, recognition and evaluation to meet service and learning goals.

9. Insures that the time commitment for service and learning is flexible, appropriate and in the best interest of all involved.

10. Is committed to program participation by and with diverse populations.

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Adapted from: The Johnson Foundation Wingspread Report on the Principles of Good Practice in Combining Service and Learning. 1989.