Community-based Learning Courses Research Articles

Do educational interventions reduce the gender gap in communication skills?- a systematic review

BackgroundEfficient doctor-patient communication is essential for improving patient care. The impact of educational interventions on the communication skills of male and female students has not been systematically reviewed. The aim of this review is to identify interventions used to improve communication skills in medical curricula and investigate their effectiveness in improving the communication skills of male and female medical students.MethodsA systematic review of the literature was conducted using the PRISMA guidelines. Inclusion criteria were as follows: used intervention strategies aiming to improve communication skills, participants were medical students, and studies were primary research studies, systematic reviews, or meta-analyses.Results2913 articles were identified based on search terms. After title, abstract, and full-text review, 58 studies were included with interventions consisting of Training or Drama Courses, Curriculum-Integrated, Patient Learning Courses, and Community-Based Learning Courses. 69% of articles reported improved communication skills for both genders equally, 28% for women more than men, and 3% for men more than women. 16 of the 58 articles reported numerical data regarding communication skills pre-and post-intervention. Analysis revealed that post-intervention scores are significantly greater than pre-intervention scores for both male (p < 0.001) and female students (p < 0.001). While the post-test scores of male students were significantly lower than that of female students (p = 0.01), there is no significant difference between genders for the benefits, or difference between post-intervention and pre-intervention scores (p = 0.15), suggesting that both genders benefited equally.ConclusionImplementation of communication training into medical education leads to improvement in communication skills of medical students, irrespective of gender. No specific interventions benefitting male students have been identified from published literature, suggesting need of further studies to explore the phenomenon of gender gap in communication skills and how to minimize the differences between male and female students.

From Classroom to Community: Understanding Community-Based Learning Practices in Malaysian Higher Education Institutions

Community-based learning (CBL) integrates the classroom learning and the community learning, as a pedagogical strategy, equipping students thereby with the skills needed, especially personal and soft skills. CBL also promotes student volunteerism, experiential learning, and community-based research. The current literature describes the numerous impacts of CBL, yet it is not widely discussed (the clear guidelines), nor how to implement it. Thus, this paper attempts to discuss the elements of CBL and the potential benefits of integrating CBL, as part of classroom learning particularly at tertiary educational level in Malaysia, using soft-system methodology; as this method can be used to analyse the intricate human activity systems. This qualitative study involved five registrars, 20 lecturers and 121 undergraduates from five public universities in Malaysia. Thematic analysis was used to interpret the data from the focus-group interviews. The findings showed that there should be six elements, in order for an effective CBL framework in Malaysian higher educational institutions. This framework would help to link between the courses’ learning outcomes, its andragogical activities and assessments for all CBL courses in Malaysian higher institutions.

Constructing Community Learning Opportunities to Reduce Attrition Against Women in Engineering

This research aims to provide insight into engineering education and how to structure academic course work and projects to demonstrate how engineers benefit society. By establishing the connection between industry and society, female students may be more interested in pursuing both Engineering education and a career in the field following graduation. As it is not part of the typical curriculum to structure coursework this way, many students fail to make this connection. Through the introduction of a community-based learning course project, first-year students were required to teach mechanics concepts to Grade 7 and 8 students. They were then asked to reflect on their experiences with the project using reflection reports and focus group discussions. The results largely illustrate an increased interest from students in the field of Engineering, especially among female first-year students.

Stories from the Flood: Promoting Healing and Fostering Policy Change Through Storytelling, Community Literacy, and Community-based Learning

This profile features the authors' shared work to co-create both a community literacy project, Stories from the Flood, and the undergraduate community-based learning courses that supported the effort. Stories from the Flood works to assist community members in southwestern Wisconsin to share their flood experiences, aiming to support community healing and serve as a resource for future conversations about flood recovery and resilience. Our collaboration on Stories from the Flood demonstrates the importance of non-university expertise and aims to daylight and correct structural asymmetries that render these rural watersheds both particularly vulnerable to flooding and absent of government intervention.

English

Described in this article is how sport management curricula can offer unique, real-world learning experiences and corresponding student learning gains, when grounded in community based learning (CBL). To achieve these ends, this study was designed to explore how to best execute CBL in sport management, informed, in part, by analyzing the lived experiences of students who were required to develop their understanding of community needs and resources, as well as devise and execute plans to meet these needs, in order to successfully complete the course. Students&rsquo; structured reflections of their discipline-specific CBL course and changes-in-self were assessed using rigorous qualitative analysis to detect emergent themes. Results indicated students&rsquo; self-reported professional, interpersonal, and intrapersonal gains in relation to how the course was taught/specific pedagogical practices.&nbsp; Competencies subsumed within these categories included learning how to effectively fund raise, learning to negotiate the challenges of group work and team dynamics, cultivating critical thinking and leadership skills, and cultivating self-as-professional.&nbsp; These data inform how to derive the unique impacts of service learning in sport, including the opportunities it presents for students to cultivate professional skills often reported to be under cultivated among recent graduates. Thus, results of this study fill a gap in the literature regarding how to foster student preparedness for &ldquo;real world&rdquo; experiences, and serve as model of how faculty and administrators can successfully integrate CBL in experiential sport management coursework. &nbsp; Key words: Community-based learning (CBL), sport management, high-impact practices, fundraising, cultivating pre- professional skills in CBL coursework.

The role of community‐based learning in teaching about industrial ecology and sustainability in the context of engineering education: A case study from the field

AbstractIndustrial ecology and sustainability education have evolved over time, as this relatively new discipline has emerged and has been refined. Courses engaging with these topics are often found in engineering departments, and feature project or problem‐based learning (PBL) commonly with an industrial partner. This provides students the opportunity to apply the topics that they have learned in class in a real‐world situation, complete with the constraints and uncertainties inherent in practice. Community‐based learning (CBL), a combination of service learning and PBL, allows students to not only apply the material from a sustainability course, but also to do so in service of a community partner. This work presents an analysis of a multi‐year effort in teaching a CBL course on the topic of industrial ecology and sustainability in a North American context. Knowledge probes are utilized to quantify student preparation for the course and confidence in knowledge gained during the course in a longitudinal manner. Meanwhile, evolving student reflection is utilized to assess the impact of how the CBL element of the course influenced student thinking about the role of sustainability and industrial ecology within engineering education. The findings suggest that applying CBL to industrial ecology education has the potential to further enhance student learning experiences, while also providing a valuable service experience.

Preparing Graduate Students for Community Engagement in Health Services Research.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the importance of didactic and experiential training in community engagement for students conducting Health Services Research (HSR) in pharmacy. The incorporation of community-based learning (CBL) courses can be beneficial for graduate students because they provide an opportunity to gain important skills in stakeholder engagement and developing sustainable research partnerships. Early exposure and mentorship of graduate students through CBL courses could minimize the risk of students entering communities in their future careers with harmful tactics such as stereotypes and implicit biases. In this paper, we draw upon previous research to identify an educational gap in community preparedness. Accordingly, we developed a community-engagement course for masters and doctoral graduate students in the HSR program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy. This paper provides an example of how other graduate programs may incorporate training in community engagement within their curriculum. In addition, we summarize how CBL courses can help address foundational graduate student knowledge gaps and offer suggestions for the formation of a CBL course.

Teaching Community-Based Learning Course in Retailing Management

This study outlines the use of a community-based learning (CBL) applied to a Retailing Management course conducted in a 16-week semester in a private institution in the East Coast. The study addresses the case method of teaching and its potential weaknesses, and discusses experiential learning for a real-world application. It further addresses CBL as an important teaching application of experiential learning for the students to have a meaningful experience of studying and making recommendations about multiple aspects of retailing management for a local retailer. Course evaluation results that compared non-CBL and CBL classes showed that the mean scores in selected questions of CBL classes were statistically higher than those of non-CBL classes and the effect size was moderate. Qualitative student comments further suggested benefits and limitations of a CBL course. Notwithstanding the challenges to the instructor and the students of a CBL course, CBL applied to Retailing Management course provided meaningful benefits to the instructor, the students, and the community partner.

“A Symphony of Possibilities”: The Joy of Art and Writing Through The Beat Within

ABSTRACTThe Beat Within is a writing and art program and publication based in San Francisco that gives a voice to incarcerated youth in various locations across the country. This article recounts the experience of the partnership between a community-based learning course at Portland State University and juvenile detention in Multnomah County, Oregon, using The Beat Within as the means for prosocial interaction between university students and incarcerated youth. Included within the article are reflections from youth participants, university students, and the author about the power of the partnership.

Teaching from the Outside In: Community-Based Pedagogy's Potential for Transformation

This photo essay documents a community-based research project using photo-voice methodology, an arts-based form of inquiry relying on photography, with youth and an interdisciplinary community-based learning course for undergraduate students accompanying the project. Using the theoretical frameworks related to critical youth empowerment, critical race theory, and humanizing research, we focus on unpacking the conditions under which young people are willing and able to engage in deep inquiry and articulate and share thoughts on identity and community with one another and the outside world. Our work also aims to share important aspects of the pedagogical processes related to work with multiple affordances, including space, time, materials, and multi-age groupings. We outline the ways participating youth and university students act as co-researchers using photovoice methodology to explore various aspects of civic engagement and the ways they share what they come to know.

Translingual Communities: Teaching and Learning Where You Don’t Know the Language

In fields such as sociolinguistics and composition and rhetoric, communication is increasingly understood as translingual, that is, as negotiated socially across languages. Those of us engaged in community literacy can and should recognize the deeply multilingual nature of the communities in which we work, and we should understand, embrace, and forward the translingual approach. Here I reflect on my first conscious attempt to teach translingually in a college course with a community-based learning component. I present an overview of the translingual orientation, reflect on the decisions I made as I prepared a college community-based learning course with translingual intentions but not overt translingual objectives, and examine some the students’ reflections that reveal their language attitudes at the end of the course. I argue that small, intentional decisions made towards a broader translingual orientation towards language and literacy make an immediate difference in how students think about language, and that those engaged in community literacy partnerships are in need of a theory of communication that the translingual approach can provide.

Translingual Communities: Teaching and Learning Where You Don’t Know the Language

In fields such as sociolinguistics and composition and rhetoric, communication is increasingly understood as translingual, that is, as negotiated socially across languages. Those of us engaged in community literacy can and should recognize the deeply multilingual nature of the communities in which we work, and we should understand, embrace, and forward the translingual approach. Here I reflect on my first conscious attempt to teach translingually in a college course with a community-based learning component. I present an overview of the translingual orientation, reflect on the decisions I made as I prepared a college community-based learning course with translingual intentions but not overt translingual objectives, and examine some the students’ reflections that reveal their language attitudes at the end of the course. I argue that small, intentional decisions made towards a broader translingual orientation towards language and literacy make an immediate difference in how students think about language, and that those engaged in community literacy partnerships are in need of a theory of communication that the translingual approach can provide.

Can We Count on Counting? An Analysis of the Validity of Community Engagement Survey Measures

Researchers use various survey efforts to understand students’ community engagement experiences. Among the crucial pieces of information for both academic and applied research is the extent to which (or whether or not) students participate in community engagement activities. However, recent studies have questioned the validity of many college student survey items. This paper describes an exploratory study that sought to investigate the validity of several survey items related to students’ community engagement participation. The study found that large percentages of students who have taken community-based learning courses do not accurately report these experiences on student surveys and examines what factors relate to misreporting. Implications for future community engagement research are discussed.

Empowering Students, Empowering Communities, Through Community-Based Learning and Civic Engagement: The Case Study of Refugee Resettlement in Lancaster, Pa

How can community-based learning courses (CBL) simultaneously be a catalyst for student empowerment, community empowerment and sustainable community development? This paper traces the progression of student and community empowerment over a four-year period and five CBL courses focusing on optimizing refugee resettlement in Lancaster County, PA.

Community-Based Learning Versus Traditional Courses in Statistics: Who Takes Them and Why

I compare students in two different data analysis courses: one course included a community-based learning (CBL) component and one did not. I find that students who chose to take the CBL course were more likely to have less mathematical and statistical background (as measured by the number of college-level mathematics and statistics courses and self-reporting), were more interested in community service, and wanted a statistics course that aligned closely with their career goals and aspirations. In comparison, students in the more traditional course had stronger mathematical and statistical skills, were more interested in a traditional course where they learned the methods from a variety of “case-studies,” and had less time for and interest in a community project. The results of the comparison suggest that there is a place for both CBL and traditional courses and that students tend to appropriately self-select into the course that meets their needs. CBL courses may also be a good place to draw in students who might otherwise not choose to take a data analysis course in college.