In Their Words: What Undergraduate Sociology Students Say about Community-Engaged Learning

Abstract

Community-engaged learning (CEL) is becoming increasingly popular across university and college campuses and sociology provides an ideal space for this type of learning to occur. While increased faculty workloads and the benefit of CEL for students are well documented, less is known about what individual students say about their CEL course experience. This paper provides a student perspective from an inaugural fourth-year sociology seminar course in CEL at the University of Victoria. The course gave students first-hand experience applying their sociological skills while reflecting on their positionality as students, peers, and researchers. Students cocreated and completed semester-long projects to aid their nonprofit community partners. To assess students’ experiences in the course, reflective journals were analyzed to explore what they said when they left the comfort of the classroom.