Service-learning Initiative Research Articles

A Service-Learning Experience in Secondary Education to Promote STEM Learning Through Collaboration Between Research and Education Centers

The needs of the digital revolution and the knowledge-based economy impose a transformation of traditional education to improve technical and scientific knowledge and include alternative abilities. This work presents a service-learning initiative with multiple goals: to improve scientific, technical, engineering, and mathematic (STEM) knowledge at school, to enhance students’ engagement, and to make people aware of the repercussions of poor indoor air quality. The initiative involves four actors: the administration which steers the initiative, students who are the receivers of the knowledge, teachers as facilitators of the activity and research centers as expert references. Within this service-learning initiative, a real-life project has been proposed, focusing on measuring carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) levels in classrooms and correlating them with indoor airborne infection transmission. Reference experts have developed two systems provided to teachers and students for project implementation. The project involves an engineering step where students set up the systems, and a scientific step where students hypothesize, develop experiments, analyse data, and communicate results gaining experience with the scientific method. Through the combined efforts and appropriate allocation of responsibilities, this experience has yielded excellent results in STEM knowledge transmission and has proven effective in fostering student commitment to their learning process.

A comparative study of virtual and insite engineering service-learning implementations

The Smile project is an engineering service-learning initiative carried out through collaboration between Chouaib Doukkali University in Morocco and Pusan National University in South Korea. Since 2016, this project has been conducted annually for engineering students from both universities. Participants are selected through an oral interview, ensuring representation from different majors, years, and genders. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the project transitioned to an online mode starting from 2020. The objective of this article is to investigate the impact of the service-learning approach on learning and its potential for enhancing engineering education. This study aims to compare the face-to-face and online implementations of the Smile project as examples of this educational approach. The analysis demonstrates a strong positive effect of engineering service-learning as a learning approach, leading to the improvement of engineering students' skills and competencies. Notably, there is minimal difference between the two implementation modes of this learning approach.

Bridging Literacy Theory with Practice: Differentiated Academic Service Learning Projects with Children's Literature

AbstractThis academic service learning initiative enabled teacher education candidates to create research‐based family literacy activities around a diverse selection of children’s books. Each project included a detailed parent or caregiver letter, which provides an overview of the family literacy activity; materials and props; step‐by‐step procedures; prompting questions; ideas for differentiation to meet the needs of varied learning styles; and real‐world extensions. As pre‐service teachers selected from a menu of literacy strategies that fit their individual letter and project design, the concept of differentiation was being actively implemented. Pre‐service teachers reflected on the experience of creating the family literacy project and their future plans for involving families in their students’ literacy learning.

‘First, do no harm’: systematic program evaluation of an equine veterinary service-learning initiative with Indigenous communities in Canada

BackgroundVeterinary students have historically lacked meaningful experiential learning opportunities in equine medicine. At the same time, there are barriers to accessing veterinary care in Indigenous communities stemming from colonial injustices. In 2018–2019, a partnership was initiated where University of Calgary students began to provide equine veterinary services to Indigenous communities. As the first-documented equine veterinary service-learning initiative in Indigenous communities embedded in a veterinary curriculum, the purpose of the study is to systematically evaluate the program for its potential impact as part of a formative process for improvement.MethodsMultiple parties in the program were engaged in a convergent, parallel, mixed-methods systematic program evaluation to explore the main program outcomes: (1) equine veterinary care; (2) clinical experiential student education; (3) cultural training of veterinary professionals and students; and (4) education of community members. The hypothesis was that ethical development using the “first, do no harm principle” would lead to benefits including a healthy horse population, a technically and culturally competent veterinary community, and an educated horse clientele.ResultsThe program had a positive impact on accessibility to veterinary care and self-reported improvement in veterinary and cultural competency. In addition to the hypothesized program outcomes, additional program outcomes and effects were identified, including reciprocal learning and relationship building with the Indigenous community, leading to trust and equity-building. The students learned from both the in-community programming as well as the Indigenous community members they worked with.ConclusionProgram evaluation of an equine service-learning initiative in Indigenous communities reveals multiple and profound impacts including improved patient health status, wider scope of veterinary and cultural learning, strengthened relationships, and reciprocal learning with partnering Indigenous communities.

Do Right, Be Bright: A Protocol on the Development of an Inter-Professional Health Intervention Model for Pre-School Children Through a Community-Based Service-Learning Initiative.

An inter-professional project with a collaborative endeavor between the programs of Dentistry, Nutrition and Medicine was carried out with the aim to emphasise oral health maintenance, making the right nutritional choices and effective hand washing among pre-school children. The purpose of this paper is to share a detailed description of the design, development process, implementation, and planned evaluation of an interprofessional school-based health promotion intervention model "Do Right, Be Bright". This model is part of a quasi-experimental study, targeting pre-school children as the "Targets of Change" through the empowerment of school teachers as the "Agents of Change". The program design was based on Bartholomew's Intervention Mapping Approach, which proposes a direction for developing a theory-based health promotion intervention and on the most extensively applied theories of health behavior, the Health Belief Model. Therefore, based on a thorough literature review and needs assessment, three key areas of needs were identified for the targeted preschool children: oral hygiene, hand hygiene and nutrition. The efficacy of this model will be pilot tested in a preschool in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia.

Community partners’ experiences with medical students’ service-learning activities

Background: The perspectives of community partners about their experiences working with medical students and how service-learning experiences affect the communities they serve remains understudied. Objective: This study addressed gaps in the literature by reporting on in-depth interviews conducted with community partners who participated in a well-established medical school service-learning programme. Design: A qualitative study was undertaken using semi-structured interviews and an edited coding strategy. Setting: A convenience sample was recruited from a database of organisations working with the medical school’s service-learning organisation. Method: Between 2017 and 2020, the researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with community-based organisation partners who worked with medical students through a service-learning initiative in an urban, underserved area of New Jersey, USA. The authors coded transcripts and identified themes after extensive reading, reflection and team discussion of transcripts and coded text. Authors confirmed thematic saturation after 20 interviews with 21 participants representing 18 different agencies. Results: Three main themes were developed: (1) medical students as role models, (2) community partners’ role in shaping medical student education, and (3) reciprocity between community-based organisations and the service-learning programme. Participants found that medical students connected well with young clients and motivated them to pursue higher education or healthcare careers especially when they had a shared ethnic or cultural background. Community partners helped medical students better understand ethnically and socioeconomically diverse communities from a whole-person perspective. Participants described collaborative learning and reciprocity between the service-learning programme and community-based organisations as a ‘win-win’ situation – with clients, the organisation and medical students all benefitting. Conclusion: Findings illustrate the importance of reciprocity between medical students and community partners. Incorporating partners in the design and evaluation of service-learning programmes is essential to understanding how community and academic health centres can better collaborate to promote health equity.

Regardless of Role: A Community Engagement Festival as a Unique Space for Differentiated Learning Outcomes for Student Leaders and Participants

Living-Learning Programmes (LLPs) in Residential Colleges (RCs) foster leadership, learning and sense of belonging amongst students. Any community engagement or service-learning initiative that takes place in such a context would benefit from the unique outcomes of LLPs. Building on this principle, we argue that the Community Engagement Festival (CE Fest), a unique, student-led, flagship event of a RC in an Asian university, functions as a platform to develop a diverse range of benefits amongst students involved in the programme – both student leaders, who design and execute CE Fest, and students who are participants in the event. This assertion is tested through: (1) analysis of the types of learning outcomes achieved by both groups of students; and (2) analysis of the features of CE Fest that enable the development of these learning outcomes. We employ the validated SErvice LEarning Benefit (SELEB) scale to capture the range of benefits experienced by both groups of students. A factor analysis of all 20 benefits in the SELEB scale found three categories of benefits: (i) civic consciousness, (ii) skills, and (iii) interpersonal relationships. A means comparison found that civic consciousness was the most successfully achieved learning outcome by both student leaders and participants alike, which aligns with the ethos of the RC. Additionally, student leaders were more likely than participants to have achieved outcomes related to skills and interpersonal relationships. Triangulation of the findings from the survey with qualitative data collected from student leaders and participants indicates that various structures and processes of CE Fest facilitated the development of specific outcomes, such as empathy and civic consciousness. As such, CE Fest is a unique learning space within LLPs that offers differentiated learning opportunities for students across various roles, while ensuring civic consciousness remains a central benefit to all students regardless of the nature of their participation.

Service learning and the medical student affective domain.

The Association of American Medical College (AAMC) requires all students to demonstrate four core attributes: knowledge, skills, altruism and dutifulness. A formal service-learning curriculum may serve to explicitly foster altruism and dutifulness in the affective domain of Bloom's taxonomy as well as proactively improve student well-being. All Harvard Medical School students enrolled in the Principal Clinical Experience (PCE) programme in the 2018-2019 academic year at Brigham and Women's Hospital were excused from clerkship responsibilities and given the opportunity to participate in a half-day team-based community-service intervention at a not-for-profit organisation in Boston, MA. Following the service-learning initiative, we examined student compassion, civic responsibility, well-being and team cooperativeness using validated survey questions, supplemented by free-text feedback. Forty-five of the 55 PCE students (82%) attended the outing. Overall, 68% of students found the outing to be valuable and 23% somewhat valuable. On a scale of 0-20, students reported very high self-perception of compassion (mean = 19.9), civic responsibility (mean = 19.7) and team development and composition (mean = 19.1), after the event. Students reported lower perceptions of personal well-being (mean = 17.5), but emotional wellness was the most frequently mentioned theme in open response. Incorporation of a team-based service-learning activity contributes to the students' community understanding, empathy and class team building. Utilisation of a published framework in the development of this initiative likely contributed to its success. Given our findings, we plan further expansion of this service learning longitudinally through the 4-year curriculum to potentially strengthen the affective domain for students further.

Co-Creation, Reflection, and Transformation. The Social Impact of a Service-Learning Course at the University of Szeged

This paper highlights three aspirations, which are shared by the diverse concepts and practices of responsible research and innovation (RRI): co-creation, reflexivity, and transformation. The authors analyse a service-learning (SL) initiative at the University of Szeged, Hungary, based on the model by Chupp and Joseph (2010). This provides a typology of SL practices and identifies four main approaches to the social impact of SL: traditional, critical, social justice oriented, and institutional change-focused approach. The authors also use this model to analyse the effects of their initiative with regard to the RRI principles of co-creation, reflexivity, and transformation. They provide evidence that their SL course may reach beyond its traditional (student-learning-based) effects in the Hungarian context, and embrace social justice and critical approaches. While the authors also found certain instances of institutionalisation, embedding critical SL into a Hungarian university and inducing significant institutional transformation seems to be a long way away.

Exploring the Meaning of Therapeutic Horticulture for Anishinabek Youth in a Brief Residential Treatment Unit: A Community Engagement CSL Case Study

This paper explored community-university engagement that integrated a short-term treatment facility for Indigenous youth, a social enterprise organization that focused on healing through horticulture therapy experiences and an interdisciplinary academic team. The focus was to discover whether a horticulture therapy (HT) approach held promise in terms of an appropriate way to expand community service-learning (CSL) with Indigenous peoples and to encourage more diversity of voices in community service-learning experiences. Youth participants took part in a photovoice study and further semi-structured interviews to document their perspectives on the meaning of their horticultural experiences. Findings revealed that youth valued the overall HT experience itself; being connected to the gardens and nature and the social interactions exploring spirituality and the self were significant and meaningful for them. Further, findings demonstrated that a collaborative partnership that engaged multiple service agencies to explore novel ways for engaging youth in healing activities with a university team that guided the research approach holds promise as a CSL with Indigenous youth. We conclude with recommendations on the significance of community-university engagement in delivering therapeutic horticulture programs for Indigenous youth as a community service-learning initiative. 

Exploring Elementary Student Perceptions of Experiential Learning Within Critical Service-Learning

Background: Critical service-learning provides an opportunity for culturally sustaining and experiential learning across a variety of contexts. This study took place alongside a larger study examining the implementation of a year-long community-based critical service-learning initiative at an underresourced elementary school. While the larger study focused on the ways in which the teachers engaged with the framework, this study focuses on the students. Purpose: This study sought to explore third graders’ perceptions of their participation in developing, planning, and implementing a critical service-learning project. Methodology/Approach: Fieldnotes from classroom observations, co-planning and co-teaching sessions, transcripts from student focus groups, and other lesson artifacts were analyzed qualitatively. Findings/Conclusions: A case study of two third-grade students found that amplification of student voice associated with engaging in the critical service-learning fostered a sense of community within the classroom and increased student self-efficacy. Implications: These findings add to the literature on critical service-learning in K–12 public schools while also providing impetus to continue studying student perceptions of experiential learning.

Community Ageing With Health And Dignity Through A Service-Learning Initiative

Background: A new compulsory service-learning subject was introduced in the Practices of Health Promotion module of Bachelor of Science in Applied Sciences (Health Studies), run by School of Professional Education and Executive Development, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. It aims to develop students’ ability to apply learned principles and concepts of health behaviour from lectures into a community setting, by completing elderly site services arranged at four selected elderly centres.
 Methods: 36 students were enrolled in the subject. An analytical framework was developed based on specific themes, sub-categories and categories. Data extracted from students’ reflective journals were input into a qualitative analysis software, Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) Miner 5 of Provalis Prosuite for analysis. 
 Results: 5 themes and 24 categories were created based on the data analysed from students’ reflective journals. The three highest frequency themes are ‘Skills learned’ (170 text units, 32.6% of total), ‘Challenges’ (140 text units, 26.8% of total), and ‘Elders characteristics’ (135 text units, 25.9% of total).
 Conclusions: Communication, teamwork and organising activities to the elderly are the most cited skills learned by students. They have also identified elders’ personality and characteristic when communicating with them. Although there were challenges when interacting with the recipients and centres, students have overcome most of them and have learned better ways to communicate with elders and reacted quickly by changing the content of designed activities provided to elders.

Project L.E.E.P. (Leadership through Education, Experience and Photovoice): An Embedded Graduate Service-Learning Initiative

Integration and consumption of sport are often used to build community identity, enhance health, and promote positive social interactions. Those benefits informed the purpose of this project, which was to integrate service-learning education and behaviors into a graduate sport management leadership course. Project L.E.E.P. (Leadership through Education, Experience, and Photovoice) benefitted local communities by providing an interactive service-learning project that was mutually beneficial to graduate students and surrounding community partners. Eleven graduate students in a sport administration leadership course partnered with different community sport organizations to execute a series of assignments designed to assess, plan, deliver, and reflect on more than 40 hr of sports service. Among those assignments was a photovoice project intended to capture service learning through the students’ perspectives and give voice to the sporting needs of a community. This project aligned with the experiential learning approach in many sport management programs, as well as the societal and service benefits outlined in the North American Society for Sport Management’s purpose and position statements.

Service-Learning as Part of the L2 Spanish Classroom in Canada

Service-learning in foreign language classrooms is an effective resource for developing language motivation. Unfortunately, Canadian language programs have been off to a slow start in adopting integrative teaching such as service-learning in their foreign language curricula (Hale, 1999). This work reports on a Community Service Learning (CSL) initiative introduced at a Canadian university in the Hispanic Studies program. A total of fifty second and third year Spanish language students volunteered with various community partners on a weekly basis for a total of sixteen weeks. End-of-term questionnaire indicates that overall students had a favorable experience at their placement and CSL had a positive influence in continuing their studies in Spanish.

Caregiver Companion: A Service-Learning Initiative in Tippecanoe County

In this paper, we share our reflection of our semester-long service learning and community engagement project in partnership with a local organization in Lafayette called Caregiver Companion. Caregiver Companion is a non-profit organization serving the elderly and disabled community in Tippecanoe County by providing companionship and respite breaks for overwhelmed caregivers. Our English 420 Business Writing class assisted Caregiver Companion on publicizing the organization to Purdue students as well as community members with digital communication materials. With a close partnership with the Caregiver Companion staff, we created materials such as newsletters, brochures, advertisements, and videos to bring their mission to the public’s eye. During the class, we used various research methods to produce white papers and communication materials that provided Caregiver Companion short- and long-term volunteer and donor engagement strategies. During our semester, we were also able to receive a grant of $3400 from the Office of Service Learning and Engagement, that enabled us to implement four different class projects in class. Through this service-learning experience, we learned the importance of business communication, project management, and community engagement. In this paper, we reflect back on our semester on how we were successful at helping our community partner via service learning and community engagement. We also reflect on how this work-place based class provided us with real experiences and made us serve our local community.

Community Engagement in Music Education: Preservice Music Teachers’ Perceptions of an Urban Service-Learning Initiative

To facilitate cultural competency among preservice music teachers, music teacher educators must create ongoing opportunities for discourse and situated learning. The purpose of this collective case study was to examine four preservice music teachers’ experiences in the Arranger-in-Residence Program (AIRP)—a community engagement project emphasizing service-learning and placed within a socioeconomically diverse urban school district. Research questions included (1) How did the participants describe their experiences in the AIRP? and (2) What challenges, if any, did the participants experience during the service-learning initiative. The AIRP involved music education students enrolled in an undergraduate-level orchestration course. Overwhelmingly, the participants’ experiences with the AIRP were considered positive and signaled unique opportunities for personal growth as novice teachers. Each of the participants described moments where they acknowledged and confronted their implicit biases.

Transformation and Development of University Students through Service-Learning: a Corporate-Community-University Partnership Initiative in Hong Kong (Project WeCan)

As service-learning is still at its infancy in Hong Kong, there is a need to systematically evaluate the effectiveness of service-learning projects and bring important implications to the curriculum. In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of a service-learning initiative that involved a corporate-community-university partnership (Project WeCan). In total, 138 university students (service providers) were included. We evaluated the project through three mechanisms. First, pretest and posttest data showed that students changed in the positive direction in terms of the intended learning outcomes in the civic engagement, cognitive and academic domains. Second, students showed positive changes in terms of psychosocial competencies and self-leadership. Finally, qualitative analyses of the reflective journals showed that students demonstrated positive changes in the areas of social responsibility, interpersonal competence, and intrapersonal skills. The findings underscore the utility of service-learning as an effective pedagogy to promote holistic development of university students.

The value of interprofessional education in identifying unaddressed primary health-care challenges in a community: a case study from South Africa

ABSTRACTMany countries rely on community health workers (CHWs) at a primary health care (PHC) level to connect individuals with needs to health professionals at health-care facilities, especially in resource-limited environments. The majority of health professionals are centrally based in facilities with little to no interaction with communities or CHWs. Stellenbosch University (South Africa), included interprofessional home visits in collaboration with CHWs as part of students’ contextual PHC exposure in a rural community to identify factors impacting on the health of patients and their families. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of this interprofessional student service-learning initiative on identifying and addressing health-care challenges of households known to CHWs. Active physical, social and attitudinal factors were identified and recorded using a standardized paper case report form. Data were anonymized, captured and categorized for analysis. The frequency and proportion of each type of active problem and referral were calculated. The collaborative team identified many unaddressed health and social issues during their visits. Their exposure to communities at a PHC level offered benefits of experiential learning and provided insight into community needs, as well as offering services to enhance the current health-care system.

Interprofessional service-learning: cutting teeth and learning to crawl

ABSTRACT An interprofessional community-based service-learning initiative, supporting early childhood development in an impoverished community, was launched on a South African university’s rural training platform. The study aimed to determine how this learning experience influenced students’ interprofessional person-centered practice. An interpretative qualitative approach was followed. In-depth focus group discussions with dietetic (n = 15), medical (n = 24) and occupational therapy (n = 6) students were conducted before they left for a rural training site, directly afterward and again six months later. The findings indicated that most students had a limited experience of interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP) beforehand. Afterward, those demonstrating developmental learning reported increased knowledge about their own roles, a deeper understanding of the roles of other professions and a realization of the importance of IPCP. Different reactions were related to students’ profession, attitude and insight, and other interprofessional experiences during the placement. Contact with service users in the community, additional interprofessional clinical activities and shared living spaces are likely to further enhance students’ competencies in IPCP. A lack of interprofessional role modeling in the academic hospital, where most students returned to, hindered them to continue following an interprofessional, person-centered approach. Longer, synchronized rotations on a decentralized platform may be beneficial to inculcate competencies related to IPCP.

Physiology Understanding (PhUn) Week at Texas A&M University‐Kingsville: a Retrospective Study

Texas A&M University‐Kingsville (TAMUK) is located in Kingsville, Texas and serves a highly diverse student body of around 9,000 students. PhUn week is a K‐12 community outreach activity that in 2014 had 86 events nationwide (www.aps.org). Out of the 86 events, only three of them were in Texas, and none of them south of San Antonio. During the Fall semesters of 2016, 2017 and 2018 the Biological and Health Sciences (BHS) Department at TAMUK offered the course Understanding Human Physiology (BIOL 4355) centered on service learning. As part of this course, students developed ways to teach newly acquired physiology concepts to elementary and middle school students. Interactive workshops were presented during Physiology Understanding Week as a way to showcase what students had learned in the areas of cardiovascular, immune, respiratory, renal and nervous system. Support from the American Physiological Society, Service Learning initiatives at TAMUK, and the TAMUK BHS Department were critical for the success of this program. Here we will discuss how in 3 years, a total of 41 TAMUK undergraduate presenters and 13 volunteers impacted five schools and more than 500 elementary and middle school students. PhUn week activities allowed the university to build local partnerships between science teachers and student scientists. In addition, this kind of engaging activities served as a platform for students to reach out to our communities, and to motivate the next generation of scientists.Support or Funding InformationThis project was funded by The American Physiological Society, Texas A&M Service Learning Initiative and the TAMUK Biological and Health Sciences Department.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.