Lessons learned from International Service Learning Projects : Students’s Perspective

Abstract

In recent years, there is a growing trend of engaging engineering students on international development projects in developing and underdeveloped countries. One such example would be International service learning projects (IESL) associated with the EPICS (Engineering Project in Community Services). There are also several other engineering organizations dedicated towards the needs in developed and developing countries such as Engineering without Borders, and Engineering for Sustainable World. These programs require engineering students, young professionals, and faculty members to get directly involved in international development initiatives and projects in the developing and underdeveloped countries. Traditionally, in the Service-learning literature, most of the studies have focused on the learning outcomes, perspectives, and experiences of the students in the domestic service learning programs. Although the research in domestic service learning program grounds in theory and the implications and results are valuable and useful, because of the complexities of cross-cultural differences associated with IESL programs, these findings may not be suitable and applicable for international service learning (IESL) programs. Through this paper, we report the lesson learned by the students and the faculty members engaged in an IESL program. Our initial findings suggest the intended as well as unintended lessons learned by the students and the faculty members engaged in the IESL program. We believe that the findings from this study will contribute to the growing literature of the engineering service learning research. The findings from this study can help the students and the faculty members engaged in IESL programs to set up a better understanding of the expectations from the IESL programs. The findings will also be useful for those service learning programs who engaged with International community partners. Last but not the least, these findings can provide insight for improving IESL program structures and may also inform further investigations of other international partnerships by providing a baseline of presented four international engineering service learning partnership in this study.