Sustainable Service Learning: A SLO Transformation

Designing service learning or experiential learning courses presents two make-or-break challenges. The first challenge is logistical—how do we sustainably deploy our limited time and resources? The second is relational—how do we sustainably cultivate service-learning sites?

The First Challenge of Service Learning: Logistics, Time and Resources

I began incorporating service learning over a decade ago, fresh out of grad school. I had few committee and no administrative responsibilities so all my time and energy went into teaching. I quickly learned two things: service and experiential learning are deeply transformative for students but incredibly time consuming for faculty.

Service Learning Model—Take #1

In 2005 when I first taught “Paul and His Letters” (an upper division undergraduate course that fulfills a general education requirement), I assigned each student 15 hours of service learning over a 15 week semester. I handpicked and prepared enough service sites for the 30 students to choose the site that matched their schedule, fit their interest, and met their passion.

The results were profound. Students wrote: “What I did not expect was such an eye-opening experience that transcended outside of the normal classroom parameters.” Service learning was “something that I will never forget and completely changed my thoughts [on the subject].” Success! But the logistical preparation was prohibitive; it added weeks to what I know now as the usual new course development investment (creating learning rubrics, site expectations and guidelines, pre and post forms, transportation liability wavers, etc.) It was completely unsustainable. Never again, I thought.

Take #2—Shifting Responsibilities onto Students

But I couldn’t stay away from service learning. In 2008 I shifted the logistical responsibilities to the students—researching, finding and contracting with a community service site became part of the assignment. There was an immediate pedagogical advantage in addition to the logistical one.

Students became familiar with the volunteer organizations off campus and they experienced how easy it is to volunteer in their local community—the first step to cultivating a life-long practice. To track their experience, levels of integration with course material, and follow-through on their final project, I assigned multiple individual meetings with each of the 30 students (15-30 min at a time, 2-3 times over the semester). This added over 30 office hours to my semester for just one course. Better. But still unsustainable.

Take #3—Meeting the Logistics Challenge of Service Learning

In 2012 I made three key changes that helped solve the logistics challenge. First, I limited student choice to three sites. This cut my leg work and preparation time with each site. And, because I knew each site more intimately, I could solicit student experiences during class discussions. Because I knew the community leaders at each site, students were more accountable to both of us, expectations were clearer, and communication was better.

Second, I put students in teams of 3-5. Rather than meeting individually with all 30 students two or three times, I now met twice with 6 or 7 teams for 15-30 minutes at a time. This cut my extra office hours per semester from 30 plus hours to 6 or 7 hours, but allowed me to maintain personal contact and close mentoring with each student. I also discovered another pedagogical advantage. Working in teams, students had to communicate with, think with and learn from their teammates as they processed their site experience, and as they prepared their final project: a team “teach-in” during class time. Each team created a short curriculum teaching their classmates what they had learned and how they were connecting their service experience with the course material and themes from Paul’s letters. Many teams organized their “teach-in” around their own corporate process of discovery, adding deep discussion and secondary reflection to the skills they developed. They were becoming teacher-learners (Freire) in the process of doing the service and articulating their learning.

Third, I coordinated with 4 other professors from diverse disciplines across the university. Together we shaped an 8 hour Saturday service learning immersion. We divided up logistical responsibilities and were awarded institutional funding to transport the 150 students. And there was a pedagogical bonus. Our preparation and service-learning-day conversations immediately became interdisciplinary—among professors and students. This was becoming not only sustainable, but invigorating and inspiring. Some of us went on to do research together out of this one collaboration—even more bang for our investment.

The Second Challenge of Service Learning: Campus—Community Relationships

So far, in solving the logistical challenges my entire focus had been on student learning and personal preservation. As I continued to hone this service learning model, I focused on two community organizations and I began to realize that I was treating “the service learning site” solely as a pedagogical tool for student learning. I had not engaged community leaders as colleagues in the teaching and learning dialectic. I had not even really acknowledged their specific mission to the community or their distinct organizational mandate. The community service sites began to speak up. They said something like this:

“We can’t continue to host your students and carry the logistical and mentoring burden of having them on site unless it furthers our mission.” “Our organization is mostly volunteers…so any paid staff hours must go toward our mission of training neighbors to advocate for low-income housing. We can’t spend our time exposing your students to the issues of low-income housing and not have any pay off in terms of public discourse.” Right. My model was still unsustainable.

Meeting the Relational Challenge

I stopped. I listened. We talked, identifying points of overlap between the SLOs in my syllabus (clear, simple oral and written communication), and their organizational mission (oral  and written public advocacy for low-income housing). For example, I created two assignments to meet their mission objectives and foster the communication skills articulated in my SLOs (1. an oral testimony given at a community gathering, 2. an op-ed submitted to the local paper).

Paolo Freire argued that when community members become collaborative teacher-learners, our teaching is transformed and our learning becomes transformational (Pedagogy of the Oppressed).Indeed.

In the next iteration of “Paul and His Letters,” my community partners and I will invite students into an on-going collaborative learning relationship where we all have strengths to share and lacunae to fill. We will talk with the students about what we have learned in collaboration, what previous students have taught us by their participation in service learning, their critical reflection, observations, experience and analysis of the learning process.

Service Learning:  Doubly Transformative

This is all new to my students. It points to another pedagogical advantage. When we—students, community leaders and professors,—enter into a shared learning process where we are all teaching and learning together, the pedagogical impact is doubly transformative for the campus, and the community.

One student said, “Before this class I thought because I am only one person, that I don’t have a lot of say in this world and I can’t do much on my own. However, now that I have seen what people can do with their [collaboration], I have found that I have great power as a human being. I now look at the world with new eyes…”

Another wrote: “In order to affect any kind of lasting change, it is essential to consider the process…” This is also true in our teaching and our collaborating.

Photo Credit: “Day 140: Traffic Cones Demand Respect” by Quinn Dombrowski–CC by -SA 2.0

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