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Service learning: model for community evaluation.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

One of the challenges of service learning at the university level is to create a collaboration that incorporates the skills and expertise of university students in a way that also serves the community. The psychology honors project described was an attempt at bridging this divide by offering a program aimed at community evaluation. A description of the collaboration is delineated with a new model of community evaluation and an after school program skills inventory.

Introduction

One of the challenges of service learning at the university level is to create a collaboration that incorporates the skills and expertise of university students in a way that also serves the community. For psychology undergraduate students, the understanding of statistics and research design is an important learning objective. One possible application of this skill set is the evaluation of community programs. The psychology honors project described below was one attempt toward bridging this divide often inherent in college level service learning. As an additional outcome, a new model was created to bridge the gap between research design and community evaluation.

During the past three years, a number of psychology students at the University of Minnesota Duluth participated in an honors seminar on community evaluation. The service-learning projects provided students with an experientially based application on a variety of topics and helped a number of community agencies toward the implementation of program evaluation efforts. The projects undertaken were coordinated in conjunction with a number of agencies affiliated with the Duluth Area Family YMCA including Mentor Duluth, True North AmeriCorps, and the 21st Century Community Learning Programs.

To bridge the application needs of undergraduate psychology students in statistics and research design with the program evaluation needs of the various youth serving agencies, the CEC-15 (Community Evaluation Components) model was developed. This model emerged from an understanding of the evaluation challenges that community organizations faced and the knowledge of what undergraduate students needed in order to synthesize their program evaluation skills. In addition a new measure (ACES) was developed to meet the difficult challenge of evaluating the outcome of after school programs and drop in centers. The ACES was created to measure a variety of skills including Academics, Computer Skills, Everyday Skills and Social Skills. This process of integrating what sometimes felt like orthogonal needs was a journey of service and learning for all involved.

Chaskin, George, Skyles and Guiltinan (2006) identified the importance of community access and capacity for assessment and planning information as well as the struggles inherent in community-research partnerships. They, along with Wilson (2004), identified issues of trust, mutual commitment and long-term relationships as critical components in such partnerships. The evolution of this ongoing service-learning collaboration seems to be successfully addressing such issues and mutual needs.

Literature

While more and more colleges and universities are making commitments to service learning (Berman, 1999; National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, 1995), few are requiting it (Antino, Astin and Cress, 2000). The onus for integrating service into the academic curriculum rests on faculty. While faculty are incorporating service learning at an increasing rate (Astin and Sax, 1998; Ward, 2000), faculty resistance is identified as a serious obstacle to service-learning. Faculty report that it takes too much time and effort, so they are not convinced of its educational values (Gray, Ondaatje, Fricker, Geschwind, Goldman, Kaganoff, Robyn, Sundt, Vogelgesang, and Klein, 1999). In addition, some faculty found service learning to be a deterrent to the traditional reward systems of the university (Berman, 1999).

More research of the academic outcomes of service learning may help to encourage faculty to get on board. However, there is a lack of awareness about what service learning actually is, how it can be incorporated into the curriculum and the variety of benefits involved.

Service learning is the integration of service into the curriculum in such a way that applications gained in either (service to the community or classroom curricular content) connects with and enhances the understanding of the other (Myers-Lipton, 1994). It is differentiated...

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