CAS Project

The fundamental element of a CAS project is collaboration. Students will spend a minimum of one month engaged in their CAS project. They should demonstrate attributes of leadership and develop skills that can contribute to their interpersonal relationships. The project integrates any combination of the three strands or addresses one independently and should result in a tangible or impactful product. The CAS project is also a great opportunity to make connections to the SDGs!

CAS project’s primary purpose is to challenge students to engage in sustained collaboration. Through this collaboration, students will learn to acknowledge the benefits of shared ideas and abilities.

A successful CAS project will:

• Involve a series of sequential experiences

• Challenge the student to show initiative, organization skills and decision making ability

• Result in an impactful action or a tangible product

• Make full use of the CAS Stages of Service Learning (below)

Students are encouraged to use Kathleen Berger Kaye’s “five stages of service learning” (2010) to as a framework for their CAS project. At UNIS these stages will sometime be referred to as CAS Stages.

The sequence involves the student selecting an area of particular interest and then investigating elements of that experience that they are curious about. Then they prepare by learning more about the interest, take action, reflect on their process and demonstrate their understanding of the process. This gives the students a reliable structure to achieve their goals and extend further into their experience.

There are two parts as noted in the diagram. The centre represents the process with four key parts: investigation, preparation, action, and reflection (occurring intermittently in response to significant experiences). The outer circle has two parts and guides students in summarizing their experience: reflection and demonstration. (CAS Brief, 2017)