from Inquiry, Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 1998, 36-41
© Copyright 1998 Virginia Community College System
Abstract
Simmons provides an overview of service learning: definitions, benefits, ways to maintain academic vigor, and grading principles. She also includes students' written comments and details on NVCC widespread use of service learning in 18 disciplines.
Academic courses have often operated within the walls of a classroom, separated from the "real" world so much that it has echoed the medieval division of "town and gown." In spirit, instructors may endorse a community college's statement of values and mission goals which pledge commitment to "our students, to our community, and to each other (Northern Virginia Community College Catalog 1996-1997). In reality, instructors in the classroom concentrate on students learning course content and exercising critical thinking skills. Our students are a community of learners, bound by the walls of the classroom. But is this the "community" included in the pledge? If not, what means can instructors use to extend the current emphasis on course content and critical thinking into the larger community? Service learning is one means to tear down those walls and build a bridge into the larger community.
Defining Service Learning
Definitions for service learning vary, derived from associations, from faculty, and from students. The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) defined service learning in one of its early reports on service learning as a teaching method "...[which] combines community service with academic instruction as it focuses on critical, reflective thinking and civic responsibilities." (AACC Survey Report AACC-SR-96-1). The AACC definition continued: "Service learning programs involve students in organized community service that addresses local needs, while developing their academic skills, sense of civic responsibility, and commitment to the community."
The Learn and Serve America Corporation offered a web-site definition: "Service learning involves students in community activities that complement their classroom studies" (http://www.cns.gov/learn.html).
Faculty may emphasize either the learning or the service aspect. According to the teaching faculty at the Manassas Campus of Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC), service learning is "an instructional strategy which links course content with service to the community. "In reaching this definition, the Manassas faculty opted to emphasize the learning component within the service learning strategy. For them, service learning is a way to build a bridge between course content and the real world. Like lecture, small group discussion, and a myriad of other instructional strategies, the focus is on course content and critical thinking. At another campus of NVCC, a counselor focuses on the service students may provide as she works with a co-curricula program located within the office of Student Development at the Annandale Campus. Finally, students who are enrolled in service learning classes are often given the task of coming up with a definition of service learning. The students in a political science class at NVCC's Manassas campus offered this definition: "Service learning provides a link between course content and community."
The number of definitions and the variety within and among them suggest that service learning shares some of the characteristics with other triedÐandÐtrue mainstream instructional strategies: lecture, small group discussion, large group discussion. The terms used to identify instructional strategies may conceal great diversity in approaches. A lecture to one instructor may mean a fiftyÐminute discourse with no break; to another it may mean a fiftyÐminute session alternating between formal lecture and informal questions and comments; to another it may mean a tenÐminute formal lecture interspersed with a Power Point presentation. Regardless of these differences, the activities are still within the confines of a "lecture." Service Learning is also subject to different interpretations. Yet all activities share common components of service and of learning (critical thinking, activities, academic content). For instructors, service learning is another tool to move academic content from the textbook into the lives of students and the community in which they live.
Reasons for Including Service Learning as an Instructional Strategy
In Disciplinary Pathways to Service-Learning, Susan J. McAleavey, Director of the Center for Public Policy and Service at Mesa Community College, offers two reasons faculty should promote service learning: "Service-learning enhances student learning" and "promotes a sense of civic responsibility among students." A growing body of literature supports her views. Surely these alone are reason enough why faculty should consider service learning as an instructional strategy. Until recently, less attention has been paid to a third major reason for implementing service learning: its impact on faculty. That impact is, in brief, invigorating.
The experience of the Manassas Campus faculty who have been involved in introducing service learning testifies to this invigoration. Especially for those "graying" faculty who have been good or excellent teachers, service learning offers a new way to reach into their disciplines and a new way to reach students.
Maintaining Intellectual Vigor
The standards of academic rigor in place in the course without service learning remain in place with service learning. The philosophical underpinning emphasizes critical thinking in the same way that many community college mission statements or strategic objectives emphasize the importance of critical thinking. What is vitally important is that instructors introduce students to service learning as a path essential to learning, as are other paths to learning; lecture, small group discussion, and exams.
Principles for Grading Service Learning
The standards of grading for service learning remain the same as the standards for grading student work associated with other instructional methods. Faculty create graded components in the same way that faculty create graded components reflecting that learning has occurred via lecture, small group discussions, or any other instructional strategy. Students must understand that spending a specified number of hours at a service site does not produce a grade. The grade comes from products which the instructor requires: a letter of introduction written to a site where the student wishes to serve; submission of any forms which the instructor requires as records of service; journals in which students record their observations and connect what they witness at the site with what they read in the course reading assignments; class discussions; and videotapes which students make to record service at the site and to record their observations about the connection between course content and site work. Whatever product the instructor requires should equal the per cent of the grade the student is earning; for example, if the service learning component is worth 20% of the course grade, the assignments tied to service learning should be worth 20% of the time the student spends working on the course.
The Risks and Rewards of Service Learning
Will service learning work as an effective instructional strategy for your students and for you? It depends. Starting any instructional strategy requires effort. Beyond the usual effects of starting a new instructional strategy, the faculty have great control over how much time and effort service learning requires. It may become no more than what the faculty member would otherwise expend on constructing a lecture or a Power Point presentation. For example, faculty may or may not participate in selecting the service learning sites. Some community college instructors create lists of sites to give to students, drawing the lists from those maintained by local city/county offices of volunteerism; others simply refer students to these offices of volunteerism. Some faculty prefer students to identify sites, while others prefer to work with a centralized college office of volunteerism. In thinking through the possibilities, faculty need to consider how much time they want to spend in site selection, how much authority they want to keep, and how much authority they are willing to pass to someone else.
In thinking about adding service learning to an already existing course, faculty should consider ways to keep their workloads constant. For example, if a course has required three traditional tests which have been producing rote answers rather than critical thinking, is it time to eliminate those tests? If a course has been requiring term papers which produce little real thought, is it time to eliminate the paper? Assessing what works and does not work is a regular feature of good teaching; changing the course to add service learning is no different from changing the course to add an assignment which requires students to demonstrate their skills at an Internet search.
When considering incorporating service learning, faculty may want to review comments from students relating their experiences. The following are from students in Political Science 211 Fall 1997, NVCC, Manassas Campus:
Adaptability of Service Learning
The heart of service learning is captured in the title of a publication from Campus Compact's Project for Public and Community Service: Rethinking Tradition: Integrating Service with Academic Study on College Campuses. The tradition remains: academic content, critical thinking. The innovation of service learning offers an opportunity to build a bridge between the two words in the phrase "community college": community and college.
Service learning is easily adaptable to fit into most any course. The following table lists 18 disciplines at various campuses of NVCC that have used or are currently using service learning components.
Web Sites for Service Learning:
American Association for Community Colleges Service Learning Clearinghouse
http://www.aacc.nche.edu/spcproj/service/service.htm
Campus Compact National Center for Community Colleges
http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/academic/compact
Campus Outreach Opportunity League
http://www.cool2serve.org/homeofc/home.html
Corporation for National Service
http://www.cns.gov
National Service-Learning Clearinghouse
http://www.nicsl.coled.umn.edu
The Service Learning Files
http://csf.colorado.edu/sl/
Works Cited
Campus Compact's Project for Public and Community Service: Rethinking Tradition: Integrating Service with Academic Study on College Campuses. Corporation for National Service. http://cns.gov/learn.htm
Disciplinary Pathways to Service-Learning. Ed. David Droge University of Puget Sound, published by Campus Compact National Center for Community Colleges
Northern Virginia Community College Catalog 1996-1997
Service Learning. http://csf.colorado.edu/sl/
Linda Simmons, who earned her Masters of Social Science Degree at the University of Mississippi, teaches history and political science at Northern Virginia Community College's Manassas Campus. Her first experience with service learning began in Political Science 211, several years before she became aware of the growing movement of service learning. Since then, she has written and received grants from the American Association of Community Colleges and from NVCC's assessment office. All her work in service learning emphasizes it as an academic strategy. This spring, her PLS students are planning a service learning conference. Ms Simmons will present a New Horizons session "Come into my Web," tying service learning to the world of Internet sites.