Why Service Learning?
Service learning gives students essential hands-on experience that complements and enhances what they learn in the classroom.
What is service learning?
Service learning integrates service into coursework to support student learning and community needs. Service learning:
- Directs university resources toward a community-identified need.
- Integrates community engagement into the course curriculum and learning objectives.
- Produces reciprocal benefits for students and community partners.
- Includes critical student reflection.
- Interrogates root causes and questions why societies’ needs are not currently being met.
Service learning differs from volunteering in two important ways. First, there is reciprocal benefit to students and community. Service learning is developed, implemented and evaluated in collaboration with the community, and community partners play an active role in identifying needs and developing interventions. Second, service learning includes guided and structured reflection, which enables students to think critically about their own values, beliefs, and assumptions.
Service learning comes in many different forms, including:
- Direct service: Students work directly with the population they are seeking to serve. Examples of direct service include tutoring youth for an after-school program, serving meals to unhoused people, and conducting interviews for advertisement campaigns.
- Indirect service: Students work behind the scenes and do not interact directly with the population they are seeking to serve. Examples of indirect service include creating social media content, translating brochures and handouts, and grant writing.
- Internships, co-ops, and clinicals: Students gain deep, practical experience through supervised experiential learning opportunities. These opportunities are often tied to degree requirements. Examples include field placements for Master of Social Work students, nursing practicums, and student teaching.
- Advocacy: Students raise awareness or support for a key issue or cause affecting a community. Examples of advocacy include conducting a voter registration drive, lobbying to increase funding for a local animal shelter, and organizing a protest.
- Research: Students gather and analyze data and information. Examples of research include gathering or analyzing datasets for a community organization and creating an assessment tool.
Service learning has reciprocal benefits for students, faculty, and community partners, and effective service learning instruction can enhance outcomes for both students and the community.
Students
- Increase their understanding of course content by applying it toward areas of vital community need
- See themselves as part of the Champaign-Urbana community
- Better understand their own values and beliefs
- Gain new experiences and professional connections
Faculty
- Meet Illinois Student Learning Outcome (3) Effective Leadership and Community Engagement through the application of course material to community
- Deepen students’ learning and engagement through hands-on experiences and interactions
- Build long-term, reciprocal partnerships with community organizations
- Serve Illinois’ land grant mission through community-campus engagement
Community partners
- Build new relationships with university students and faculty
- Leverage university resources to serve existing priorities or create new ones
- Share their knowledge and expertise with university students and faculty
- Show the impact of their services to a broader audience
Is service learning right for my class?
Service learning can be found across a wide range of disciplines on campus, and it can be adapted to fit many types of classes. Faculty should carefully reflect on how service learning will further students’ learning and what specific deliverables could serve community identified needs. Class size, course level (i.e. survey versus seminar), and students’ skills are also important when assessing whether service learning is appropriate. Finally, faculty should consult their colleges and departments about guidelines and standards.
- Corey Dolgon, Tania D. Mitchell, and Timothy K. Eatman, eds., The Cambridge Handbook for Service Learning and Community Engagement, Cambridge University Press, 2017.
- Barbara Jacoby, Service-Learning Essentials: Questions, Answers, and Lessons Learned, Jossey-Bass, 2014.
- John Saltmarsh and Matthew Hartley, eds., “To Serve a Larger Purpose”: Engagement for Democracy and the Transformation of Higher Education, Temple University Press, 2011.
- Marshall Welch and Start Plaxton-Moore, The Craft of Community-engaged Teaching and Learning: A Guide for Faculty Development. Campus Compact, 2019.
"Students rose to meet so many challenges that were outside of the course’s planned learning outcomes. Working closely with community partners to research and write grants sparked students’ creativity and drive to complete excellent work for its own sake, not to ‘merely’ do well in the class."
Andrew Moss
Department of English