Learning the Basics

Service learning defined

According to the Ohio Campus Compact, service learning is "a form of instruction that uses community service activities as part of the medium for learning."  As the phrase 'service learning' suggests, the activity has two dynamic, but interrelated parts.  First, service learning means that a student is actively engaged in community service, which could be as direct and traditional as tutoring or working in a hunger center or nursing home.  Service learning might also involve students in providing indirect service by organizing fundraising activities, collecting food for a food bank, or providing a technical marketing plan or database computer support for a non-profit agency.  Students could also be involved in the  community service as advocacy by organizing public information or going door-to-door as part of a lead abatement awareness project. 

Second, service learning involves learning.  This learning is not incidental learning, which often results when becoming involved in different activities, but learning that is focused and directed.  For example, as part of a course on urban social problems, students might staff a homeless shelter on Friday nights.  This experience, along with other traditional instructional forms such as assigned readings, class lectures, and student journals provides both a theoretical and practical framework for the students' learning.  Students are then able to study homelessness from both a theoretical and a practical approach to the problem.  In return, vital services are provided to homeless persons and the community.  

Stakeholders

The Ohio Campus Compact identifies three stakeholders with service learning:

• The learner - any student performing the service
• The community - the geographic area being served
• The discipline - the student's field of study or major
  

Often, service learning is confused with other forms of community-based learning activities, namely, volunteerism, field research, and internships.  While all of these activities play a crucial role in the student's learning experience, they are not service learning.  The following explains why:

• Volunteerism benefits the community, but the student performing the service does not receive academic credit.
• Field research has discipline-specific goals that  mesh with the needs of the community, meaning the needs of the student performing the research is secondary. 
• Internships provide the student with opportunities to apply his or her discipline-specific knowledge to a professional setting, focusing more on the student's needs, even though the needs of the community are important.
  

So, service learning is achieved only when the needs of the learner, the community, and the discipline are balanced.  A clear connection to course learning objectives and meeting real community needs are the two key elements to realizing this balance.

The website for the Ohio Campus Compact is http://www.ohiok-16service.org/occ/occabout.cfm.

to top