QUALIFYING FOR SERVICE-LEARNING COURSE DESIGNATION
In order to be designated as a Service-Learning course, the course should incorporate the following elements:
- Enhanced Academic Learning
- Purposeful Civic Learning
- Relevant and Meaningful Service with the Community
- Integration Strategies
- Data Collection
To submit a course for Service-Learning Designation please use information on this page to guide your submission. You will need to log in using USING THE PRIVATE COMPUTER LOGIN SETTING TO ENSURE THAT YOU ARE NOT LOGGED OUT BEFORE COMPLETION (***Please also attach your COURSE SYLLABUS and any other relevant documents by using the attachment function at the top left of the form***.) PLEASE COPY YOUR RESPONSES INTO A WORD DOCUMENT AND SAVE THEM BEFORE HITTING THE "OK" BUTTON FOR SUBMISSION. Read the information below first and then click here. This will link to an electronic form that when filled out and submitted will go to Dr. Philip Way, Associate Provost for Undergraduate Programs, who will assign the course to the Service-Learning Curriculum Committee for review.
The Service Learning Course Rubric below is designed to help analyze the extent to which a course satisfies each of these elements. For each element there are three possible categories, Minimal, Emerging and Strong. The rubric is designed to measure the quality of each element and to describe what an even better service-learning course might look like.
To be designated as a Service-Learning Course the course must:
1. Have a REQUIRED (not optional) Service-Learning Component with objectives that:
- Students will develop an enhanced appreciation of community issues/needs
- Students will increase their involvement with community affairs
- Students will gain an understanding of how the knowledge, skills, and abilities learned in the course apply to every day life
AND
2. SATISFY EACH ELEMENT OF THE SERVICE-LEARNING COURSE RUBRIC IN THE EMERGING OR STRONG CATEGORY
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Quality Indicator
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Strong
(Element is in place and operating at effective level)
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Emerging
(Element is present but needs improvement for effective practice)
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Minimal
(Element is missing)
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Enhanced Academic Learning
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*Course intentionally relates service to student academic learning
*Partners, specific service activities, and duration of service enhance academic learning
* Credit is awarded for student demonstration of academic learning
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*Service experience incidentally relates to academic learning
*Partners, service activities and duration of service do little to contribute to academic learning
*Some credit is awarded for academic learning but mainly credit is awarded for service
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*Service is not related to student academic learning in course
*Credit is awarded solely for doing service or for quality of service
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Purposeful Civic Learning
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*Course intentionally helps students understand community needs, the context of their service, and how they can impact their community *Credit is awarded for demonstration of the above
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*Course incidentally helps students understand community needs, the context of their service, and how they can impact their community
*Credit is not awarded for demonstration of the above
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Course does not help students understand community needs, context of their actions, and how they can impact their community
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Relevant and Meaningful service with the community
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Student service:
*Is well organized
* Correlates with course academic and civic learning goals
*Responds to a community need as identified by the community
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Student service:
*Is fairly well organized
*Correlates somewhat with academic and civic learning goals
*Somewhat responds to a need identified by the community
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Student service:
*Is not well organized
*Does not correlate with academic and civic learning goals
*Does not necessarily respond to a need identified by the community
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Integration strategies support learning from service experiences and enable its use towards meeting course objectives
(i.e. learning activities that encourage integration of experiential and academic learning)
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Ongoing integration activities promote critical reflection and analysis include *classroom discussions
*individual structured reflections (journals)
*presentations
*paper assignments
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Integration activities exist but not on an ongoing basis e.g. include only a final paper or presentation
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Students may be required to record their service activities but there are no activities for integration experiential and academic learning
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Data Collection
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Undertakes to collect data using Service Learning extra question set.
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Undertakes to collect data using Service Learning extra question set.
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Does not collect data
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To submit a course for Service-Learning Designation please go here AND USE THE PRIVATE COMPUTER LOGIN SETTING TO ENSURE THAT YOU ARE NOT LOGGED OUT BEFORE COMPLETION (***Please also attach your COURSE SYLLABUS and any other relevant documents by using the attachment function at the top left of the form***.) This will link to an electronic form that when filled out and submitted will go to Dr. Philip Way, Associate Provost for Undergraduate Programs, who will assign the course to the Service-Learning Curriculum Committee for review. PLEASE COPY YOUR RESPONSES INTO A WORD DOCUMENT AND SAVE THEM BEFORE HITTING THE "OK" BUTTON FOR SUBMISSION.
Service Learning Curriculum Committee (SLCC) (includes at least 2 faculty members and the Director of Office for Service Learning) has responsibility for reviewing and approving for designation all courses submitted by Deans/Associate Deans/Faculty/ as Service-Learning Courses.
Once SLCC completes the review process, the person submitting the course will receive an email indicating the results of the committee's decision.