Impact of Service Learning Projects on Student Self-Assessment of AICTE Outcomes Achievement

Many communities and nonprofit organizations in the United States grapple with the reuse of publicly owned buildings and infrastructure from the 19th and early 20th centuries that have become landmarks in their communities. Often these communities or organizations do not have adequate resources (technical expertise, funding) for even preliminary engineering services. Engineering programs at universities can assist these communities by providing engineering expertise through service-learning (SL) projects, at the same time providing engineering students exposure to the field of heritage preservation and to important preservation engineering issues. This article presents SL case studies at the University of Vermont (UVM) as examples of this type of collaboration. Benefits, challenges, and SL assessment results are included. For the past 4 years, as part of a National Science Foundation Department Level Reform (NSF DLR) grant, civil and environmental engineering students at UVM have worked on multiple SL projects with local communities throughout their 4-year program. In many cases, these SL projects have involved historic structures. Although not an original emphasis of the DLR grant, heritage preservation is becoming a component of the UVM reform efforts, such that in 2010 this topic began to be formally included in both the first-year introductory engineering course and senior capstone design course. The SL approach was found to be effective in meeting education goals of the civil and environmental engineering programs and their accreditation requirements as well as providing meaningful service to the local communities caring for historic structures and sites. Both students and faculty gained exposure to and understanding of preservation engineering topics, as well as networking with the heritage preservation community in Vermont and elsewhere. Incorporating heritage preservation issues into engineering programs through SL projects may prove beneficial at other institutions.

It is well established that university engineering students are capable of concrete contributions to sustainable development while improving their academic skills by undertaking service learning (SL) projects tailored for the content of the course. These SL projects can normally be classified as: 1) collaborations with a community group or non-profit organization to provide specific engineering design or construction around a community need, or 2) an internship-like experience with industry in which students provide solicited work for a client. The limitation of both of these approaches is that they do not prepare students to implement projects that are not prescribed. This paper presents the findings for a novel pedagogical exercise in which students were assigned SL projects in which they were to act as change agents for industry by implementing unsolicited energy conservation measures (ECMs) to improve the environmental performance of an organization. These ECMs focused on green information technology and systems (IT/S) SL projects, which were integrated into a 4 year mechanical engineering elective in engineering for sustainable development. The projects were broken into two components – a virtual and a real SL project. For the virtual component, the students used Appropedia.org, an appropriate technology wiki, to coordinate the five member teams and to develop and publish ECMs utilizing green IT/S. The ECMs created by students were constructed from templates, which had been developed by a multi-disciplinary team made up of representatives from economics, engineering, environmental studies, and management information systems. The ECMs were then open sourced and made available for any organization to use to economically and environmentally justify improvements in IT/S. For the second component, the student teams self-selected industry clients and obtained permission to perform IT/S energy audits of the organizations. After performing the audits, the teams selected among the ECMs developed by the class to make recommendations to the organizations. Preliminary results are presented and discussed and conclusions are drawn on the effectiveness of such hybridization projects to SL in engineering.

Keyword EssayCritical Service Learning William Carney Service learning has become a feature in higher education in courses ranging from computer science and graphic design to English and the humanities. These courses are designed to provide “internship” experience and enable students to use skills they learned in the classroom in “real world settings.” These “real world settings,” however, exist in some rather well-defined economic, social, and political system. Tania Mitchell suggests that traditional approaches to service learning either assume that such projects are already inherently related to social justice or are simply concerned with other issues such as the teaching of some rather acontextual “workplace skills.” There exists, however, a growing recognition that service learning could enable students to recognize and more deeply understand the social and economic structures they are asked to work within. The aims of this “critical service-learning” approach include the redistribution of power in the service-learning relationship, the development of authentic relationships between the university and community, and an unapologetic movement toward the goal of social change. At my university there is an interest in providing service learning in more traditional workplace settings, but there are also faculty members who are attempting to use these projects to help students understand the contexts in which they live and work. This keywords essay details some recent scholarship in literacy and critical service learning. It is by no means a complete picture of the efforts in this area but, rather, presents some interesting service-learning projects that might be duplicated at other institutions. All the projects provide opportunities for students to gain an understanding of the economic, social, political, and, in one case, environmental contexts in which they live. Writing plays a primary role in facilitating such understanding. Lisa Rabin’s article “The Culmore Bilingual ESL and Popular Education Project: Coming to Consciousness on Labor, Literacy, and Community,” details a service-learning project featured in a Spanish class at George Mason University. The project offered an alternative to more “market-based” service learning. In 2009, Rabin had been contacted by labor organizers from the Tenants and Workers United (TWU) in Culmore, Virginia to possibly have some of her bilingual students offer an ESL course for day laborers who were also new immigrants at the union’s offices. A former graduate student of Rabin’s was asked to spearhead the project and train the undergraduates who would serve as ESL teachers. The project attempted to build a bridge between academic literacy and community literacy using the “popular education” model (Calderon 2006). Rabin deemed the summer-long project a failure. She noted that the [End Page 79] clients of the program needed intensive Basic English instruction, a job that was much too large for full-time undergraduate students. The “separateness” between the two groups remained. The course, however, met a smaller goal, providing the opportunity for undergraduate students in a Spanish course to consider the role of structural forces in creating and sustaining inequity in Latino/a neighborhoods. Indeed, half of the undergraduate students were themselves “heritage” speakers of Spanish who grew up in bilingual households. Although Rabin was disappointed by what she considered the failure of the project to make positive changes in the lives of its clients, the undergraduate tutors seemed to come to a better understanding of the lives of immigrant day laborers. The sort of critical service-learning that students engaged in provided a more visceral understanding of the socioeconomic barriers at work in Hispanic neighborhoods. She suggests that service learning projects are too often hijacked by market entities that impose a neoliberal ideology on the very necessary work students perform. In Rabin’s project, students were able to form an attachment with the neighborhood where the clients lived and worked. This sort of service-learning project offers literacy services to clients while providing students a different lens through which to view their experiences. Similarly, in the journal Reading Improvement, Janet C. Richards explores how participation in a service-learning project might impact the professional dispositions of graduate education majors. Specifically, she wanted to know if participation in such a project would impact the majors’ attitudes toward and competence in teaching students of color...

Background: Service learning (SL) is a collaborative relationship between university professors, their students, and community partners who combine academic learning and active participation to address community issues. Previous studies in SL and physical education teacher education (PETE) found SL projects increased opportunities for learning and applying pedagogical methods, prepared PETE students to teach children from diverse backgrounds, and promoted an understanding of individual teaching responsibilities. Given the number of PETE university programs in SL emerged over the past decade, minimal research has supported the specific use of SL in PETE. It was suggested that PETE programs provided content knowledge and pedagogical strategies to deal effectively with immediate instructional challenges but paid less attention to anticipate future challenges through student teaching experiences. A SL project for children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was designed which enabled PETE students to learn how to manage behavior while teaching physical education.Purpose: To explore the experiences of PETE students in a SL project for children with ADHD.Participants and setting: Four female and two male PETE students were the participants in this study which investigated their project experiences in SL at a major mental health institute in a large urban Canadian city.Research design: A phenomenological approach was used to describe the lived experiences of PETE students in the SL project.Data gathering: Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted and videotaped to acquire rich and deep knowledge of PETE students’ SL experience. Each student was requested to bring unit plans, lesson plans, written reflections, and final term papers to enhance the interview process.Data analysis: Each interview was transcribed verbatim and a line-by-line thematic analysis was performed.Findings: Three higher-order themes emerged from thematic analysis. The ‘where have I been’ theme suggested past teaching and community work experiences shaped decisions to become physical educators. The ‘it's all about caring’ theme involved reduction of stigma linked to teaching children with ADHD and merging theory and practice through application of instructional models and deliberate lesson plans. The ‘teaching to play’ theme revealed various benefits linked to PETE student participation in SL and challenges inherent with team teaching.Conclusions: Future research recommendations include capturing the experiences of other participants in the SL project for children with ADHD to gain much greater insight into the whole SL experience and help to shape future projects. Much research remains to be performed in SL and adapted physical education (APE) or local community recreation centers where students from allied health disciplines could participate together. A variety of different qualitative research approaches were also recommended to explore participant experiences in SL projects. Similar SL projects, conducted in multidisciplinary environments, may also be exciting new venues for PETE programs. Finally, the participants’ stories led us to suggest that SL is a contemporary pedagogy that addresses calls for the development of caring pedagogies that prepare future teachers for the realities and challenges of a changing world.

To what extent can service learning provide for developing students who will be productive workers and citizens? A research study that investigated the relationship between college student participation in service learning projects and their future participation in organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) will be discussed. Organizational citizenship behaviors are those discretionary individual behaviors that are not part of the job description but can have a significant impact on the effective functioning of an organization. Partaking in OCBs resembles volunteerism because it involves engaging in task-related behaviors at a level so far beyond required or generally expected duties. Some of the most common OCBs in the workplace include helping others who have been absent, giving advance notice when unable to come to work, exhibiting a willingness to tolerate the inevitable inconveniences and impositions of work without complaining, and being concerned about the company’s life (Organ, 1988, 1990). Previous researchers have shown that service learning offers a way of informing students that they can play an integral role in affecting the lives of many people outside of their college campus. This is especially true for those entering adulthood (Astin & Sax, 1998; Astin, Sax, & Avalos, 1999; Batchelder & Root, 1994; Boss, 1994; Dunlap, 1998; Eyler & Giles, 1999; Kenny, Simon, Kiley-Brabeck, & Lerner, 2002). The current study’s results indicate that service learning projects can prepare students for future participation in OCBs. This is the first study to associate service learning with OCBs in a formal manner. This study highlights the important role that service learning can play in both undergraduate and graduate student development. It also displays this methodology’s teaching potential. It can assist in the development of individuals who will participate as responsible members of their organizations and in the society at large.

Research on service learning in business education often enumerates its efficacy and overall value. The focus on business students attitudes toward service learning offers insight into program design and implementation of service learning into business curricula. This study investigates the distinctions between undergraduate and graduate business students attitudes related to service learning in the business college of a Midwestern liberal arts university. A survey was distributed to a total of 210 students in three of the colleges undergraduate and graduate business courses respectively. Students assessed their motivation, preparation, and skills to meet and fulfill service learning projects. Results of this study reflected that graduate business students possessed greater levels of commitment and skill sets to perform service learning projects. These data support an ideology that undergraduate business students may need more social development and academic preparation to gain the maximum benefit from service- learning projects. Traditional-age undergraduate business students were surveyed; thus responses to survey questions could have differed greatly if the undergraduate business students surveyed were non-traditional-aged or returning adult students.

The evaluation of Service-Learning (S-L) projects in online environments has become increasingly relevant in educational research, at the same time as the importance of using mixed methods has risen. However, there are few studies focusing on the evaluation of virtual Service-Learning, as most studies concentrate on face-to-face Service-Learning projects. In this regard, the aim of the present research is to assess three Virtual Service-Learning (vS-L) projects using a blended (quantitative-qualitative) evaluation method, also conducted online. The evaluation was conducted by students from the National University for Distance Learning, who completed a questionnaire asynchronously and participated in synchronous focus groups within their respective groups. Data were arranged in a mixed panel (questionnaire items and focus group verbatim opinions). The questionnaires demonstrated that Service-Learning is an excellent methodology to broaden students’ skills, abilities, and competencies to better face the professional world. The focus group verbatim interventions showed that the construction of indicators improves learning. Overall, the assessment results revealed a high level of student satisfaction. The implementation of our mixed-methods approach is innovative because it is conducted entirely online and utilizes computer technology for processing the gathered information.

The current study examined student experiences (n = 111) in an undergraduate social work (BSW) research seminar in which a service learning (SL) project was the primary focus. Student groups of approximately six or seven worked with local agencies to develop a research plan for the agency. Students found the SL project to be a positive experience. The SL outcomes resulted in a greater appreciation of research, including a greater interest in and comfort with conducting research. Results also are compared to a similar SL project in which the entire class, rather than a small group, worked with one agency. The implications are discussed.

Traditional engineering service learning (SL) projects can be classified as: 1) collaborations with a community group or non-profit organization to provide specific engineering around a community need, or 2) an internship-like experience with industry to address work requested by a client. The limitation of both traditional SL approaches is that they do not prepare students to implement unprescribed projects. In contrast, here students chose both the project and the partner for a self-directed engineering SL experience. This paper presents the findings of this novel pedagogical exercise in which students acted as change agents for industry by implementing unsolicited energy conservation measures (ECMs) focused on green information technology and systems (IT/S), in order to improve organizations’ environmental and economic performance. The hybrid SL projects had both ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ (field-work) SL components. For the virtual component, student teams developed and published on-line, open-source ECM calculators. For the field-work component, the teams self-selected industry clients and performed IT/S energy audits. Applicable ECMs were then selected and tailored, forming the basis of recommendations to the organizations. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of such hybrid engineering SL projects.

The role of service-learning in heritage preservation and engineering education

Contribution: This article measures the impact of a service-learning project in a first-year introduction to computing course on students’ understanding of engineers’ roles and responsibilities and their attitudes toward plastic pollution. Background: Service learning has been integrated into classrooms for many years, but its utilization in engineering courses is lacking. Furthermore, plastic pollution is a complex and multidisciplinary problem that requires social, political, environmental, and engineering solutions. This work provides a quantitative assessment on whether service learning through a litter pickup project impacts students’ views of the role of engineers in solving complex sociotechnical problems. Research Questions: 1) How does service learning change students’ perception of an engineer’s role in solving sociotechnical problems? and 2) how can service learning be used to increase students’ environmental awareness and action? Methodology: Surveys were administered to students before and after their participation in a service-learning project. The study was conducted across five sections of an introduction to a computer programming course that is required of first-year civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering students. Findings: After the service-learning project, students were more likely to agree that engineers have the skills, knowledge, and responsibility to solve societal problems. Students also demonstrated a more holistic understanding of plastic pollution and reported changes in their waste reduction behaviors.

Service learning is a 21st-century pedagogy that can address critical health needs found in our communities, and it can provide opportunities for health education students to grow personally and professionally. Universities are increasingly offering service learning as a method to foster collaboration between campuses and partners, to meet community needs, and to prepare students to be engaged citizens capable of working in diverse communities. Health education preparation programs are recognizing the value of this beyond the classroom approach to learning and the opportunities it presents for students to develop professionalism. This article describes the development, implementation, and evaluation of a Latino Service Learning Project (SLP) in an accelerated, MPH community health course for health education students. As part of a SLP during a graduate community health course, students planned and implemented a health education project for a Latino community. Students partnered with a Latino health agency for a nationally sponsored health promotion event. Lessons learned and the benefits of service learning are presented. Students’ reflection papers were analyzed and served as the primary evaluation method to determine the effects of the SLP on them. Students reported that the SLP provided benefits to include improvements in cultural competence, growth in health education professional development skills, and personal growth such as an enhanced sense of civic responsibility. Understanding how to integrate service learning into a community health education course may help faculty adopt this teaching method.

A Community Partner’s Role During a First-Year Service Learning ProjectThere are three primary roles in a Service Learning project: student, teacher, and communitypartner. It has been established that students enjoy and benefit from Service Learningexperiences. Teachers benefit as well, in their ability to meet educational objectives. For thecommunity partner, the advantage appears to be obvious; their problem is resolved. However,this cannot be assumed. This paper will explore actual gains and losses incurred by onecommunity partner during an experience with a Service Learning project.In the 2011 – 2012 academic year, 45 first-year engineering students were introduced to a needfrom a remote village in Kenya. Though it would have been preferable to work directly with thevillagers, poor internet quality and the extreme distance made this impossible. As a result, peoplefrom the local community, who regularly travelled to the village, identified the need and acted asthe ‘customer’ during the 18-week long project. In groups of 3, the students designed charcoalpresses to convert agricultural waste into charcoal briquettes more efficiently than the currentprocess.The community partners were involved in the design process during the problem introduction, ahands-on demonstration of the process, Q&A sessions, design reviews, and the designexposition. Also, while in the village, the community partners facilitated an exchange ofinformation and performed an experiment designed by the students. The time demand, thoughgreat, gave the students a better understanding of the needs of the villager.This paper will include a qualitative assessment of the community partners’ involvements. Thiswill be achieved through interviews, an examination of activities between the students and thecommunity partner, and excerpts from the data acquired in the remote village. Finally, theaccomplishments and deficiencies that the community partner experienced will be analyzed, andrecommendations will be made to ensure that the expectations are achievable.

Service–learning has long been essential to university education. With the literature focusing on extolling its benefits to student learning, little direction is offered to educators interested in approaching a service–learning project. Applying this knowledge to a studio–based field like interior design requires additional adjustments, and questions still abound: What must be considered when integrating service–learning in an interior design curriculum? What are the challenges and opportunities that must be recognized? And, how best can the field take advantage of this teaching pedagogy? As universities are increasing the emphasis on service–learning in their missions, it is appropriate for interior design to start a dialogue around ways to strengthen its associations with service–learning. Drawing from a literature review and three case studies from the interior design program of the University of Minnesota, this paper responds to the above questions and posits that only by deconstructing service–learning projects can educators determine their suitability. The paper proposes a framework, a tool that can guide programs’ decision making of how and if to integrate a service–learning project in their curriculum. The framework consists of four criteria and sets of considerations relevant to each and sheds light on what service–learning projects entail. The authors conclude that educators cognizant of the multiple decisions embedded within each of the criteria (relate to course objectives, apply course knowledge, connect to the community, and reflect on learning) enhance their chances for successful service–learning experiences on all levels: the university, program, students, client, practitioners, and the community at large.

Reviewed by: The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning ed. by Randy Stoecker, Elizabeth A. Tryon, Amy Hilgendorf David Dadurka The Unheard Voices: Community Organizations and Service Learning Randy Stoecker, Elizabeth A. Tryon, with Amy Hilgendorf Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2009. 232pp. An extensive field report about community organizations in the greater Madison, WI, region, The Unheard Voices offers a rare look into how charities and nonprofit organizations perceive their service-learning relationships with academic institutions. From the perspective of community partners, the view isn’t always so pleasant. The Unheard Voices fills a frequently ignored gap in service-learning studies and offers long overdue insight from community partners. However, the book’s value is limited by its focus solely on the Madison region, an area known for its community activism and service-learning participation. Despite this limitation, the book is effective at raising awareness about the level of sustained engagement needed by both academics and community partners to create greater reciprocity in service-learning projects. The volume’s editors Randy Stoecker, Elizabeth A. Tryon, and Amy Hilgendorf, all based out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, note that despite service learning’s goal of serving community partners, service-learning researchers have generally ignored the perspective of those organizations that academic institutions aim to serve (5). Stoecker, Tryon, and Hilgendorf start with the premise that there are problems inherent with doing service learning from the “perspective of the academy” (viii) and ask the question “Who is served by service learning?” (1). Using responses from sixty-seven interviews with staff of community organizations in the greater Madison region, the authors’ results suggest that higher education institutions appear to reap more of the rewards of service-learning partnerships than community organizations. The book itself emerges from a service-learning project, born of a graduate seminar on qualitative research in which both graduate and undergraduate students—with a wide range of backgrounds in nonprofit work—contributed to the majority of the book chapters. This model itself suggests what service-learning practitioners might [End Page 84] undertake in their communities to improve the effectiveness of service projects, and it represents one of the greatest strengths of the book. The first half of the book (chapters one through five) is devoted to understanding the problems with service-learning relationships, the motivations that drive community organizations to participate in service learning, how they engage in partnerships and manage service learners. The second half (chapters six through ten) develops responses to address the problems that drive community partners away from service-learning partnerships. In chapter one, Stoecker and Tryon highlight the growing concern over the “issue of whether service learning truly serves communities” (3). The authors argue that previous research has been based on “superficial” methods, using focus groups and Likert scale questionnaires to present a rosy picture of community organization and educational institution service-learning relationships (5). They argue that projects, because educational institutions are the main drivers of them, have veered too far to the learning side of service learning, ignoring the service aspects and what benefits the community reaps from such relationships. Stoecker draws on his twenty years of experience to highlight instances of disengaged faculty who sometimes don’t care about the results of unsuccessful community projects, fail to manage service learners, or lack understanding of the needs of their partner organizations or local communities. Chapter two provides an overview of what motivates community organizations to participate in service learning. Authors Shannon Bell and Rebecca Carlson assert four primary reasons community organizations work with service learners: to build capacity, to achieve long-term education goals, to form potentially advantageous relationships with the university community, and to help students better understand their work. While building capacity seems intuitive for community organizations, Bell and Carlson point out that they were “greatly surprised to learn that many community organizations hosted service learners not because it expanded organizational capacity, but because the organizational staff saw it as part of their mission to educate the public” (23). However, Bell and Carlson end the chapter with a quote from a community partner who notes that putting students to work with meaningful, education-focused tasks as opposed to busy work...