Guidelines for Developing a  Good Service Learning Activity

Consider how service can be integrated into the courses you teach.  Before doing anything else, you need to think about how you are going to link particular service learning activities to specific learning outcomes.  While many faculty begin with a specific learning outcome and then develop service activities that will contribute to this outcome, it is also possible to begin with a specific service activity and think about how this can be linked to a learning outcome.  In both instances, the community becomes an extension of the classroom.  Ultimately, what you need to decide is what kind of learning you want them to gain as a result of this experience.   Once you’ve figured out how to fit service into your course, you should decide where students will do their service and how that activity is to be structured.  Service can involve direct contact with individuals in need or indirect contact through the channeling of resources to solve a community problem.  It can be a one-time special project or a semester-long commitment.  It can be optional or required.  Regardless of what you decide, it should not only be challenging, engaging, and meaningful to them, but also address a particular community need.   At the very beginning of the semester explain to students your rationale for including a service component in your course.  Discuss the parameters of the assignment.  Describe the benefits to both student and community.  Identify where students will engage in service.   While reflection is absolutely essential, students generally don’t know how to go about it and will need to be taught how to make the connection between their service and the course content.  But as they reflect on what they have done, they not only come to see what meaning and impact their efforts have had, but as importantly, they begin to make the connection between service and learning.  This reflection can be done in a variety of ways (see separate sheet on different ways to do reflection).   Because academic rigor should not be compromised, service-learning outcomes need to be evaluated in the same way as any other academic product.  Students are to be graded on this academic product, not on their hours of service.  In evaluating the students, the guiding question should be: Did the student master the course material?   Finally, there should be celebration.  Students need to be recognized for their learning and for the time spent in the community.  But just as important as the achievements of the students are those individuals who were served by the activity.  Their efforts and involvement in the project should also be acknowledged and celebrated.

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