Whether you are teaching CEL for the first time or developing your longstanding course, CITL can provide assistance through one-on-one consultations, workshops, Webinars, and digital resources. We also support community engaged scholarship, thinking about how to integrate CE into teaching, research, and service.
If you have any questions about your community engaged learning course idea or the pedagogy of CEL, please reach out to program director Michael Valliant for a consultation.
Please use these resources in tandem with the frameworks jointly developed to articulate CEL as experiential learning at IUB.
When developing your CEL course, you will need to consider how to effectively do the following:
There are many ways to facilitate community-engaged learning at IU Bloomington, from a small single-day commitment to a semester-long research project, each with varying time commitments:
| Duration | Number of Students |
|---|---|
| Single-day service | Usually a full class or section |
| ~20 hours of service over the semester, usually 2 hours a week | Based on capacity of agency—anywhere from 10 to 90 |
| 40+ hours of service over the semester | Usually 1 or 2 per agency |
There are several possible modes of student engagement, which can be combined into hybrid modes:
Additionally, community engaged learning can be applied in educational (increasing community knowledge) and civic advocacy contexts (creating community awareness or pushing for change), which goes beyond traditional conceptions of service learning as taking place solely within the non-profit/social service sector (directly increasing capacity in community agencies).
Finally, there are many possible integrations of community engaged learning in your classroom. You might make community engaged learning an option within a course, a requirement within a course, a one-time group service project, a capstone project, or even a multiple course project.
Without a doubt, a service-learning class does require extra time to plan, meet with your community partner(s), work out logistics, orient students toward the service, visit the site(s), and structure regular reflection and evaluation. There are, however, ways to minimize the amount of time—by building on community connections you already have, incorporating the service into your research agenda, condensing student projects into teams, working with a single community partner, and working through that community partner's Advocate for Community Engagement (ACE). Many instructors report that, like any course, a service-learning course gets much easier each time it is taught.
However you evaluate, grading should be based on learning from the community engagement, not on the community engagement itself. Many instructors don’t change their evaluation methods but assume that the service heightens student learning on traditional measures, and that monitoring attendance is all that’s necessary. A well-integrated course will include mechanisms for understanding how service contributes to or enhances learning course content. You might assign pre- and post-service reflections, scaffolded reflections, or specific papers that reflect on and incorporate the service experience. These could be graded for analysis, critical thinking, civic learning and engagement, and other typical criteria.
When a certain pedagogical method serves the learning objectives of the class, instructors require it. Students are rarely asked to “volunteer” to write a paper or take a test. It is important that you let the students know the distinction between volunteering and service (Furco, 1996). In this case, community engagement is not voluntary; it is required as a text—a text of real life experience—for the course. You should convey directly and clearly to your students how the service enhances the subject matter. Students will learn more and be less likely to complain about the extra time required if they understand the relevance of community engagement to course material.
Share up front with your students as much information as possible about the organization and what’s expected. You and your community partner should have tasks and expectations clearly defined. Approach service partnerships as you would when selecting other course content by understanding the community need, service opportunities and how they complement course content, and other expectations of the community partner. Creating a statement of expectations or scope of work can be very helpful in managing the service. Any work you do up front can really ease problems down the road. Ongoing communication is essential to a successful service-learning collaboration. Keeping in close contact with the community partner representatives and your students throughout the semester about the service-learning experience and your students’ performance will help prevent potential problems as the semester progresses.
You’re still in charge of how class time is used. Students can reflect on the experience outside of class through journals, response papers, and more formal papers. However, it is most effective to discuss in class some experiences, problems, and patterns that emerge from community engagement. And there is evidence that "thoroughly integrate[d] service and academic learning through continuous reflection promote[s] development of the knowledge, skills, and cognitive capacities necessary for students to deal effectively with the complex social issues that challenge citizens" (Eyler, 2002).
That’s something only you can answer. If you are interested in students’ intellectual development and personal growth, this kind of teaching is really wonderful. Because a sizable proportion of students learn best through experience, working with community-based education can enhance your teaching effectiveness. Many instructors feel that service learning connects them more closely to the community in which they live and that they, themselves, learn from this experience.
Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning
