Synergies with Community Service Learning

Community service learning incorporates volunteer activities by students into student learning: The student is expected to connect course material to volunteer experience, often in the form of some sort of written research report for both the instructor and the community organization. It is a potentially powerful pedagogy because the student learns how to apply academic understandings to community challenges while at the same time refining their academic understandings in the light of practical experience. Note that the "learning" in community service learning is thus inherently integrative in nature.

Interdisciplinarity is important here because most community challenges are interdisciplinary in nature. Moreover, there is an important overlap between the goals and skills associated with both interdisciplinarity and community service learning:

• • They engage complex real-world challenges

  • They promote critical thinking

  • They require that we try to understand different perspectives

  • They require that we seek common ground among competing perspectives

  • They expose students to perspectives that they may not have encountered previously

  • They thus challenge stereotypes and preconceived notions

To be successful, service-learning opportunities must be matched to course material, and students must have time to reflect on their experiences. Interdisciplinary courses are thus best matched with community organizations that engage with complex societal issues. Such courses may then contain explicit material both on the nature of integration or perspective-taking and on service learning.

Jacoby, B., & Howard, J. (2014). “What is service-learning?” In Service-Learning Essentials: Questions, Answers, and Lessons Learned. Jossey-Bass. Retrieved from http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com.proxy.lib.miamioh.edu/book/college-planning/9781118944011/firstchapter [They note that: “Service-learning is explicitly designed to promote learning about the historical, sociological, cultural, economic, and political contexts that underlie the needs or issues the students address.”]

Newell, W. H. (2000). “Powerful Pedagogies” In B. Smith & J. McCann (Eds.), Reinventing Ourselves: Interdisciplinary Education, Collaborative Learning and Experimentation in Higher Education (pp. 196–211). Anker Press. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260676315_Powerful_Pedagogies

There are many websites devoted to community service learning, including http://www.ipsl.org/ and http://compact.org/