Service-Learning Best Practices

Service-Learning Update

November 03, 2009

This Service-Learning Update offers the following items:

• Summaries of the September, October, and November "Service-Learning Shop Talk" sessions
• New Best Practices documents for
• o Collaborating with Agency Partners
• o Reflecting 

Upcoming Office of Service-Learning Events

• Monday, November 10, from 3:00 to 5:00 in Corey 207 - Reflections on Civic Engagement: What (in civic engagement activities) has worked (and what hasn't) during this semester? Open discussion.
• Tuesday, February 16, from 2:50 to 4:00 in Corey 209 - Service-Learning Shop Talk, "Designing and Assessing Service-Learning Written Assignments," by John Suarez (Coordinator, Office of Service-Learning)
• Wednesday, March 24, from 3:00 to 4:00 in Corey 209 - Service-Learning Shop Talk, "Social Justice and Reflection," by Anne Burns-Thomas (Foundations and Social Advocacy)
• Tuesday, April 06, from 2:50 to 4:00 in Corey 209 - t.b.a.
• Wednesday, April 28, 2010, from 3:00 to 5:00 in Corey 209 - Reflections on Civic Engagement: What (in civic engagement activities) has worked (and what hasn't) during this semester? Open discussion.

Contact John Suarez, Coordinator of the Office of Service-Learning, at john.suarez@cortland.edu or at 753-4391.  Note:  the Office of Service-Learning is now in 2105 Moffett Center.

Service-Learning  Shop Talk

Summaries of the September and October 2009 sessions

Purpose:  The 2009-2010 Service-Learning Shop Talk series draws on SUNY Cortland expertise to help service-learning practitioners further strengthen the academic rigor of their service-learning courses.

September 22, 2009.  Best Practices:  Collaborating with Community Agencies.  Facilitators - Judy Bentley (Foundations and Social Advocacy) and Fran Pizzola (Program Coordinator, Access to Independence) drew on their years of teamwork to examine guidelines for effective learning in campus/community collaborations.  Participants included a graduate student, a faculty member, and a community agency supervisor.

 

During opening remarks, Bentley referred to Harriet McBryde Johnson's article, "Unspeakable Conversations," in which McBride describes "the joyful 'muck and mess of disabled lives well-lived," noting that "There's also a 'muck and mess' to service-learning that's important to the development of problem-solving traits and skills."  Close collaboration between faculty and agency can help students develop those traits and skills.  One of those traits is a flexibility that allows the individual - regardless of her or his role in the community project - to deal with the ambiguity and uncertainty that can accompany "real-life" projects.

 

While discussing preparation for service-learning projects, Pizzola emphasized the importance of a faculty member's skill in marketing her service-learning course, and the importance of an agency supervisor's skill in marketing agency projects.  Bentley emphasized the importance of developing a network of personal relationships;  both emphasized persistence.

Q&A

In response to a question dealing with the degree of collaboration between faculty and agency supervisor, both presenters encouraged faculty to remember that agency supervisors can often help refine ideas and recommend mutually-beneficial projects.

One participant asked about design hints for student orientation sessions.  Pizzola and Bentley named basics, such as the agency's history, goals, culture, and language.  (People served by Access to Independence, for example, are the agency's consumers.)  The presenters also noted the important of having a service-learning agreement.  A well-designed agreement specifies each individual's responsibilities, especially as those responsibilities relate to the agency's needs and to the learning goals of the student.

Remember that many students are afraid to go into (what for them is) a strange community; yet students' field work often becomes more engaging than the classroom-based course.

 

Judy Bentley is Assistant Professor in Foundations and Social Advocacy, and she is founding editor of the online, peer-reviewed journal, Social  Advocacy and Systems Change  (http://www.cortland.edu/ids/sasc/).  Frances Pizzola (a SUNY Cortland graduate) is Program Coordinator for Access to Independence, and she is a Steering Committee member of the Institute for Disability Services at SUNY Cortland.

 

The archived version of this Service-Learning Shop Talk is available on the web at:
http://cortland.edu/webcast/webcast.asp?VideoID=112

 

 

 

 

October 21, 2009.  Best Practices:  Reflection.  Facilitator - Bonni Hodges (Health Chair) collaborates with community members as a service-learning educator and as an active member of many community organizations.  Her presentation draws on her scholarship and experience. Participants included two service-learning interns.

 

Informal discussion prior to the presentation led smoothly into Hodges' best practices for reflection, which follow her 4Cs Principles:  Reflection should be 

• Continuous throughout the course
• Connected systematically and purposively to course goals and objectives
• Challenging, requiring critical thinking and "discomfort in a 'safe place'"
• Contextualized, linking the larger world to the SL experience and the immediate community

 

Hodges suggested that instructors sequence reflection across a continuum of progressively more rigorous thinking, moving from prompts that are

• Objective, dealing with concrete experience, to
• Reflective, drawing on the affective component of the experience, to
• Interpretive, drawing on the cognitive component: What, for example, have you learned about situations such as the one in which you have been volunteering? And finally, prompts should become
• Decisional, in which students have changed their perspectives and behaviors as a result of their experiences and reflections

 

After providing sample prompts, she offered a variety of ways of reflecting, ranging from discussion to electronic presentations.

 

Q&A

 

Hodges encouraged discussion participants, especially Office of Service-Learning Intern Valerie Winberry (Phys Ed major) and History grad student Christopher Keaney, to offer their observations and questions.

            Winberry, a junior who has volunteered with the YWCAs Bridges for Kids Program and with Professor Tim Davis' Wheelchair Sports Program (among others), pointed to the multidisciplinary nature of reflection and to its affective element.  Hodges reinforced Winberry's observation, noting, for example, that emotions are the focus of one stage in a progression of reflection prompts.

Keaney, who is pioneering a service-learning Archival Project Internship with Garra Lloyd-Lester (Chair of the Cortland County Communities That Care) and with Jim Miller (History), wondered about distinctions between reflecting about materials or artifacts and reflecting about people.  Hodges highlighted some differences between the two, and encouraged Keaney to continue looking for opinions on the connections between these two considerations.

 

Hodges provided sample prompts, and she offered a variety of ways of reflecting, ranging from discussion to electronic presentations.

 

The archived version of this Service-Learning Shop Talk is available on the web at:

http://cortland.edu/webcast/webcast.asp?VideoID=/ServiceLearning/Hodges.mov

 

 

 

 

November 10, 2009.  Best Practices:  Planning and Evaluating Service-Learning Projects.  Facilitator - Susan Wilson (Recreation and Leisure Studies, Intern Coordinator) (service-learning-related role). Participants included two service-learning interns (Christopher Keaney, History, and Valerie Winberry, Office of Service-Learning) and Ellen McCabe (-----, Memorial Library).