Reflection:  Connecting Service to  Academic Learning

In order to assure that servie is linked to learning, a service learning activity should include opportunities for reflection, which are evaluated by the instructor.  There is no one way in which to have students engage in reflection.  Rather, as the instructor, you can choose among serval different strategies for reflection.  What follows is a brief description of some  of the methods in which this can be accomplished. Personal Journals present opportunities for students to express their thoughts and feelings about the servie experience throughout the semester.  Different ways of using journals include: critical incident journal -- ask students to write about a significant event that occurred as part of the service experience, explain why it was significant, what was learned from the incident, and how the incident will influence future behavior. three-part journals -- each page of the weekly journal entry is divided into thirds:  description, analysis, and application.  In the first section the student describes some aspect of the service experience, in the second he/she analyzes how the course content relates to the service experience, and in the third section the student comments on how the experience and the course content can be applied to their personal or professional lives. key-phrase journal -- you provide a list of terms and key phrases at the beginning of the semester for students to include in journal entries.  Evaluation is based on the use and demonstrated understanding of the terms. double-entry journal -- students describe their thorught and reactions to the service experience on the left side of the journal, and then use the right side of the journal to write about key issues from class discussion or readings that relate to these experiences. dialogue journal -- students submit their journals to you every few weeks for your comments.  While labor intensive, this can provide regular feedback to students and prompt new questions for students to consider during the semester. Directed Writings require the students to consider the service experience within the framework of course content.  You structure a question based on a specific reading and ask students to write a short paper integrating the point in the reading with their service experience.  These can be done several times throughout the semester. From their experiences in the community, students can identify a particular social issue and then write an experiential research paper, in which they integrate their experiences with library research to fully explore the issue.  As part of the paper, you could require them to make recommendations to the agency for future action. E-mail Discussion is yet another way to facilitate reflection.  You can regularly post questions for consideration and topics for directed readings that relate to the students' service experience.  Students can send you weekly summaries of what they are doing and how it relates to the course content. On occasion students may encounter an ethical dilemma while carrying out their service.  This can serve as the basis for an ethical case study.  Students begin by writing up the dilemma they confronted, including a description of the context, the individuals involved, and the controversy that created the dilemma.  The case study is read to the class and the students discuss the situation and identify how they would respond.  If no real dilemmas present themselves, you could create a likely ethical issue that students might have encountered in the course of their service, and then carry out the exercise based on their own experiences out in the community. Service learning portfolios contain evidence of both processes and products completed and ask students to assess their work in terms of the learning objectives of the course.  Portfolios can contain any of the following:  service learning contract, weekly log, personal journal, impact statement, directed writings, photo essay, products completed during the experience.  Students write an evaluation essay providing a self-assessment of how effectively they met the learning and service objectives of the course. Finally, class presentations can be used.  These can be done either as an on-going part of the course--students report to classmates every week on their experiences -- or saved until the final classes of the semester.  In either case, students describe their activity and analyze how it related to the course objectives.

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Copyright & copy; 2000 Oakton Community College. Last update Summer 2000