Characteristics of Academic
Service-Learning
- Community service serves as the vehicle for the achievement of
specific academic goals and objectives.
- It provides structured time for students to reflect on their
service and learning experiences through a mix of writing, reading,
speaking, listening, and creating in small and large groups and
individual work.
- It fosters the development of those "intangibles"- empathy,
personal values, beliefs, awareness, self-esteem, self-confidence,
social-responsibility, and helps to foster a sense of caring for
others.
- It is based on a reciprocal relationship in which the service
reinforces and strengthens the learning, and the learning
reinforces and strengthens the service.
- Credit is awarded for learning, college-level learning, not for
a requisite number of service hours.
How is Academic Service-Learning different
from community service, internships, cooperative ed.,
etc.?
- Academic Service-Learning uses community service as the vehicle
for the attainment of students' academic goals and objectives.
- Community service fills a need in the community through
volunteer efforts. Academic Service-Learning also fills that need,
but it uses that need as a foundation to examine our society, our
future, and ourselves. Further, Academic Service-Learning provides
students with opportunities to use newly acquired skills and
knowledge in real-life situations.
- It identifies in advance, and tracks, specific learning
objectives and goals (as well as the intangible ones).
- Students perform a valuable, significant, and necessary service
that has real consequence to the community.
- The goal of the service is to empower students and those being
served.
- The needs of the community dictate the service being
provided.