Service-Learning Manual
Overview
Resource for teachers and students in programs that require service-learning.
Service-Learning Manual
Walters State Community College
Service-Learning Manual
For
Intro to Social Work
Dr. Angie Elkins
Service-Learning
Service-learning is a teaching strategy that uses meaningful community service, combined with guided reflections, to enrich and enhance student learning. Service-learning incorporates two fundamental components: SERVICE, a project that meets an identifiable community need; and LEARNING, classroom activities and reflection which connect the service project to the academic curriculum.
What exactly is service-learning?
Service-learning is a blending of academic study and community service. Academic credit is given for the actual learning that occurs during the volunteering and not just for the clock hours of service to the community. Students can choose to be placed in one of many available non profit agencies, educational sites, and government offices. They are then given specific assignments, based on both an academic learning plan and the specific need of the community site. Service-learning is, therefore, an effort to promote the fact that much learning takes place when we can connect classroom instruction to real-life situations. Furthermore, emphasis is placed on linking what students are doing at their individual sites with broader community issues and involvement.
What is the difference between service-learning, volunteerism, and internships?
Service-Learning
There are a number of core requirements that students have to meet before they can be given credit for these classes and/or projects. These requirements ensure that students reflect upon what they are doing and evaluate what they are learning.
Volunteering
Volunteering is a worthwhile activity, but we generally do not learn from our volunteering in the same way, nor do we connect it to classroom instruction and academic course content.
Internships
Internships place little or no emphasis on the student providing service to the site, whereas service-learning emphasizes the student making a contribution to the community while the student uses the site as a vehicle for learning.
How do I demonstrate what I am learning and how am I graded?
You demonstrate what you are learning by what you write in your reflective journal, your verbal exchanges with your faculty supervisor, and your final analytical paper. Each participating faculty supervisor will tell you ahead of time what their basic requirements are for a specific grade.
Student responsibilities to agencies
- To be open and honest at your site from the beginning
- To participate in any training that is required by the particular agency
- To respect confidentiality
- Maintain professionalism: observe dress codes, report on time, avoid gossip, etc...
- To understand commitments of time and task and to fulfill them
- To seek honest feedback
- If in doubt, seek advice
- To accept guidance and direction when they are offered
- To enter into service with enthusiasm and commitment
- To be considerate of the agency, your supervisor, other volunteers and staff, and any clients that the agency serves
- To be effective advocates for change as needed
- To utilize all your talents and experiences in order to do a good job for the agency
Guidelines for reflective journals
As a student in Intro to Social Work, you will be required to complete 15 weekly journals related to your service-learning experience through the class discussion boards. Journals do not have a length requirement but your response should fully answer the writing prompt and show connection to your service-learning experience and/or the materials covered in class. You must reply to at least one classmate for each journal and connect your response to the service-learning experience and/or materials covered in class.
Keeping a reflective journal
Keeping a journal is an excellent way for you to reconstruct, reflect on, and think about your involvement experience. Processing your service through your perceptions and emotions helps you to gain insight into what you are experiencing and how you are feeling about it. A journal also serves as a useful record of your service and learning.
To be most effective, a journal should not just be a log of events. It should be a way for you to analyze the activities you are engaged in and the new things you are learning, to note important events, and to relate your objectives and goals to what you are learning and doing.
This journal involves weekly writing prompts designed to create conversation about the experiences you have during your service-learning and relate it back to the materials covered in the classroom. Each week you will be required to fully respond to the writing prompt and reply to at least one other student. Both posts should connect the writing prompt to the service-learning and/or the course materials.
Guidelines for writing an analytical paper
Your final paper for this class is an analytical paper related to your service-learning. This paper is a minimum of 3 pages. The outline below is a starting point. You do not have to answer all the questions as they may not apply to you or your organization. However, please include the three sections.
- Part 1: Description (approximately 1 page)
- What were your duties and responsibilities?
- What was your work situation and environment?
- What are the goals of the agency?
- What skills did you acquire as a result of your service-learning experience?
- How did the service-learning experience evolve and change during the semester?
- Part 2: Evaluation (approximately 1 - 2 pages)
- What does service mean in your life?
- What impact do you feel you had on the community?
- What are the community needs?
- What did you learn:
- From your service-learning experience?
- About the agency you worked in, the supervisor/s you worked for, the responsibilities of this office/supervisor?
- About the strengths and limitations of this site in carrying out its responsibilities to the community?
- About the experience of working in an agency/school/government setting?
- About yourself - your own strengths and limitations; about how this experience affected your own personal goals and career objectives?
- How could you improve the quality of your service?
- If you were in charge of the place where you volunteer, what would you do to improve it? Would you have the volunteers do anything different from what you are doing? Would you treat them differently?
- Part 3: Integration (approximately 1 - 2 pages)
- How has the service-learning experience changed what you thought you knew about local schools, government offices, community service agencies, or special interest groups?
- How has your experience affected your evaluation of our political system/society?
- Has this service-learning experience helped you to develop a sense of civic responsibility? (i.e. more insight into social/public policy formation and legislation, and how to advocate to make a difference). Give examples.
- What specific problem(s) or issue(s) did you encounter during your service learning experience that either broadened your interest in our political/social system or increased your awareness of connections between community needs and policy formation?
- How has your experience affected your educational goals?
- How would you change the service-learning experience to make it a more valuable learning experience?
- Were there any conflicts between your service responsibilities and learning objectives?
- Does race and socio-economic background affect the service you are doing? For example, who “does” service - in terms of ethnicity/race and socio-economic background? Do different groups have different reasons for doing service?
- Why is service predominantly done by females, by humanities not science majors? How can these tendencies be changed?
- How do those persons in the community, who are being served, perceive you and/or the site you represent?
- Does your site conduct needs assessments to establish community needs?
- How has this experience helped you to integrate knowledge gained in the classroom?
- Relate your experience to the materials covered in the classroom - what connections did you see?
Service-learning forms
These forms must be completed and turned in BEFORE you begin your service-learning.
- Complete your service-learning application here: Application
- Print and sign your Release/Hold Harmless agreement form and submit a photograph or scan of the form in the appropriate dropbox.
- Print your Referral Confirmation Form, take it to your agency and complete it with your agency supervisor. Submit a photograph or scan of the form in the appropriate dropbox.
- Print your Volunteer Placement Agreement, take it to your agency and have your agency supervisor complete it. Submit a photograph or scan of the form in the appropriate dropbox.
Use this log to keep track of your hours as you complete your service-learning.
This form must be completed by your supervisor AFTER you complete your service-learning.
- Print this form Final Student Evaluation, give it to your agency supervisor and ask that they email it back to your professor. My email is listed at the top of the page. Note: This form must come directly from your supervisor to your professor.