Service-learning has been defined as “a form of experiential education in which students engage in activities that address human and community needs together with structured opportunities intentionally designed to promote student learning and development.  Reciprocity and reflection are key concepts of service-learning.”  (Jacoby and Associates, 1996, p. 5).  Service-learning has a two-fold focus:  learning for the student and service to the community.  

There are principles of good practice in combining service and learning of the National Society for Experiential Education, Raleigh, NC (Honnet and Poulsen, 1989).  These include:  An effective and sustained program that:

    engages people in responsible and challenging actions for the common good,

    allows for those with needs to define those needs,

    provides structured opportunities for people to reflect critically on the service experience, and

    includes training, supervision, monitoring, support, recognition, and evaluation

The approach of service-learning is consistent with the theories and empirical research of a number of leading educators and developmental psychologists, including Dewey, Piaget, Kolb, Kohlberg, Perry, Belenky et al., Baxter Magolda, and Coles (see Brandenberger, 1998 and references in  Jacoby, 1996).  The approach is also consistent with the recent change in paradigm in education from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning (Johnson, Johnson, Smith, 1991; Barr and Tagg, 1995).  Astin et al. (1998), in extensive surveys of thousands of college students over a number of years, found service to be beneficial in retention, in community service after graduation, in racial interaction, in civic responsibility, and in development of a meaningful philosophy of life.  Positive cognitive and attitude development is expected of students involved in service-learning. 

Recently Eyler and Giles (1999) included 1500 students from 20 colleges/universities in a study of the effect of service-learning.  Service-learning was found to impact positively:  tolerance, personal development, interpersonal development, community and college connections.  Students reported working harder, being more curious, connecting learning to personal experience, and demonstrated deeper understanding of subject matter.  The quality of placements in the community and the degree of structured reflection were found to be important in enhancing these positive effects, significantly so for critical thinking increases.  They summed up effective service-learning principles in five C's:  connection (students, peers, community, faculty; experience and analysis); continuity (all four years; reflection before, during, after service); context (messiness of community setting is integral to learning); challenge (to current perspectives; not overwhelming); and coaching (opportunity for interaction; emotional, intellectual support).

More recently, the RAND (Gray et al., 2000) collected questionnaires from 1300 students from 28 institutions that had received grants under the Learn and Serve America, Higher Education program sponsored by the Corporation for National Service.  Self-reported experiences, attitudes, and outcomes of students with course-based service-learning to those in similar courses not involving service-learning.  Students in the service-learning courses reported a higher level of satisfaction, more writing, more time, and higher effects in civil participation and life skills.  In academic and professional skills, the service-learning courses were rated as no higher statistically than the control courses.  Given that less than half of the service-learning courses had students apply course concepts to service and discuss service experience in class, one wonders about the quality and extent of the service-learning in the courses in the study.   

Service-learning has been integrated into some engineering courses, particularly capstone design courses or directed studies courses.  For example, Purdue U. initiated the EPICS program in Electrical Engineering, now spread to Notre Dame and Iowa State; U. of Utah has many courses involving service-learning; Colorado State, and other universities have service-learning programs in engineering (see Campus Compact documents and web site:  www.compact.org).  However, service-learning engineering courses appear to be few in number compared to the 11,800 service-learning courses reported by 575 member campuses of Campus Compact (1998 survey reported in Eyler and Giles, 1999).  A survey we sent to all the engineering deans in the country yielded only about thirty courses involving service-learning in the US (Duffy, Tsang, Lord, 2000).

 

The table below lists the nine courses into which I have incorporated service-learning at U Mass Lowell: