Implementing Service-Learning: Strategies and Challenges

1. Implementing Service-Learning:Strategies and Challenges Rick Fisher, University of Wyoming Rich Rice, Texas Tech

2. Starting Points • Do you already have a definition for service-learning? • Are you here primarily from a teaching perspective, an administrative perspective, or some other perspective? • Are you using or have you used service-learning in your courses? • Are you familiar with Zlotkowski’s service-learning matrix? • Which of the questions on the handout is most interesting?

3. A definition Service-learning is a teaching method which combines community service with academic instruction as it focuses on critical, reflective thinking and civic responsibility. 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. - Community College National Center for Community Engagement

4. Three Hallmarks Pure service Academic internships • Service-learning • Credit-bearing • Reciprocal • Reflective

5. Zlotkowski’s Matrix

6. Two Takeaways • Pedagogy: Service-learning may encourage faculty toward a pedagogy that requires more reflection, extensive attention to course design, and a goal of transforming as well as transmitting knowledge. • Academic culture: Service-learning creates pedagogical change which, in many institutions, works againstprevailing cultures and assumptions.

7. Rich Rice: TTU & ELS • University students at ELS • ELS students at university • Students together in both locations

8. Rich Rice: TTU & ELS “ • One of the ways culture can be defined, as Hofstede puts it, is a “collective programming of the minds.” Such a metaphor implies that outside social and cultural forces are programming the operating system, that no single individual of a particular culture can escape such a programmatic experience. While there are biological and neurobiological differences between each of the members, there are certain socio-genetic characteristics that, like a social virus, permeate the organisms. Changes in that culture can only mutate slowly over time, and usually without present conscious awareness. History affords a culture the chance to review its mutation, how it has been programmed, yet such an account of its social and cultural movements are subject to that culture’s own awareness of how epistemological, ontological, phenomenological, and rhetorical factors… −TTU Student

9. Rich Rice: TTU & ELS “ • We attended a class at TTU, then learned about how to quote from some famous person, how to make it and paraphrase it, and citation. Also when we did that, we saw the Americans and us have the same mistake. When I saw that, I make myself proud. We attended only a normal class, then we listened to the students, how they talked to the teacher and asked the questions. We ask the same questions. We ask it. They are looking for the same things, like commas, the quotations, how to paraphrase, how to make the argument, take both sides, and that there are resources for these and how to support your idea. I think it's the same as here at ELS. −ELS Student

10. Rick Fisher: Tech writing and Non-profit research The class: senior-level technical/professional writing course, open to all majors The project: community research with Feeding Laramie Valley • What are “food equality,” “food security,” and “food sustainability”? • What efforts exist or could exist to help promote food equality, security, and access in Albany County, WY? Products: • Final reports and presentations: community chicken coop, wild game meat donation, eating habits of local vegetarians, dietary preferences of senior citizens, role of public transportation in grocery shopping

11. Reciprocity What can students offer? • Time • Expertise • As citizens/residents • As inquirers • As disciplinary experts (?) What can students gain? • A rhetorical context • An opportunity for actional learning • An understanding of scale

12. Student comments • It makes us more accountable and more involved because we are writing to an actual person. • It forced me to adapt to a situation that I was uncomfortable in or had doubts about. • Add more instruction in technical writing and writing for a career. • FLV is a very broad organization, and I'm still not sure what they try to do overall. Pick a different partner that appeals more to students. This will make it easier to spark interest and limit the amount of “Logans” in the group.

13. Questions • What questions does Zlotkowski’s matrix raise? • What questions do our experiences raise? • What questions from the handout are most interesting to explore more fully? • What answers do you have to share?