Community Engagement: A Retrospective Learning Experience During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

All undergraduate students at Saint Mary’s College of California complete a community engagement (CE) course to fulfill a core curriculum graduation requirement. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many community partners did not have the capacity to collaborate with the college for CE. To address this shortage of CE courses, a course titled Community Engagement: A Retrospective Learning Experience was created for graduating seniors who had already completed significant work/service/praxis directly related to their past coursework but did not receive the course credit. In this CE course, students actively and critically reflected upon their past service experiences in real time and integrated them into their academic understanding of the world to meet the CE requirement. With faculty guidance and critical reflection, the analysis of student data demonstrated that this CE course was perceived by students to be meaningful and beneficial to their learning.