Tips for Faculty

These tips are intended to help you think through all the logistics of service-learning projects in your class. They are not hard and fast rules, and they will differ between classes based on class level and learning outcomes.

For starters, please read this quick blogpost written by a nonprofit manager for faculty:
"Guidelines for higher education programs that require students to do special projects with nonprofits"


Tips for scoping a project

  1. Include clear parameters for the project in syllabus. Include: type of project, number of hours students are expected to spend on the project, expectations for final product, etc.

  2. Consider providing an essential and/or guiding question to help narrow student focus. For example, guiding questions could include 'what is the role of advocacy in our community?' Click here for a sample course outline with guiding questions.

  3. Create a script or flyer about the project that students to take to a Community Partner. This will help everyone understand the project expectations, and set students and Community Partners up for success.

  4. Use the Faculty CP Outreach Checklist (attached) to stay on track.

  5. Negotiate the scope. Consider constraining the size of the project as much as possible. Advocacy can be overwhelming and intimidating, so having each student do the same type of project, such as a blog, video, or speech, will help scope the project.

Tips for building relationships with Community Partners

  1. Reach out to Community Partners ahead of time and begin building a relationship. Meet for coffee throughout the year to keep the relationship strong and maintain your understanding of the Partner's ongoing needs.

  2. Help students find a good fit. Students could ask themselves the following four questions: do they genuinely want me, will it meet my goals, do I have the knowledge, skills, and technology to complete this successfully, and will my work environment be safe?

  3. Do no harm. Take care to “do no harm.” The community and the clientele are not a teaching or research laboratory. The notion of community as laboratory assumes a false hierarchy of power and perpetuates an attitude of institutional superiority. Basic goals of service-learning include community development and empowerment. For these goals to be realized, faculty and community must be equal, collaborative partners.

  4. Stay in touch with Community Partner throughout. Encourage students to share drafts of projects with CPs so they can receive and incorporate feedback. This will help mitigate the Partner's concern about a final product that does not represent them well.

  5. Give the CP veto power. If the students create a final product the Community Partner is not happy with, allow an open and frank conversation between the partner and students. Perhaps a solution is allowing the students to share in class, but not with a wider audience.

  6. Share Interacting with Community Partners handout with students (attached).

Tips for addressing ethics

  1. Discuss students' responsibility when representing another person or group

  2. If students advocate for a group of stakeholders, community stakeholders should not only be informed but approve any advocacy that is undertaken on their behalf by students

  3. Communicate clearly with Community Partners and make sure they feel they are being represented accurately

  4. Emphasize working WITH a community in a partnership rather than providing noble service

  5. Discuss topics like protecting others' privacy when publishing information, coercive and biased language, setting clear boundaries and expectations, etc.

  6. Encourage students to follow up with Community Partners and contributors or interviewees to make sure students have represented their words fairly and in the way that they intended


Tips for maintaining respectful and healthy discourse in the classroom

Encourage students to...

  1. Keep the focus of their project local.

  2. Be specific so they can propose a message about actual change.

  3. Think about how their message will lift people up as opposed to sealing people off.

  4. Base their project off of research from appropriate sources.

  5. Explore not just their argument, but also any counter arguments around the issue they choose.

Minimize chances for volatility by...

  1. Creating standards of conduct that foster an open and respectful classroom environment. View more resources here.

  2. Acknowledge the political side of advocacy but encourage students to focus on it as a tool for community education and raising awareness.

  3. Push students to use appropriate research outlets to support their claims.

SL staff help connect faculty with community agencies, and often facilitate matches between course learning objectives and community needs. If you need help finding community partners, please contact KaraBrascia@boisestate.edu or call 426-2380.