Teaching About America's Fiscal Future in the University's Core Curriculum

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (02) ◽  
pp. 323-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Galatas ◽  
Cindy Pressley
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Civic Education ◽  
Budget Deficit ◽  
Core Curriculum ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
State University ◽  
Curriculum Instruction ◽  
Assessment Of Student Learning ◽  
The University

Civic engagement is increasingly recognized as a significant function of public universities. The university provides a variety of opportunities for civic engagement, including co-curricular activities, service learning opportunities, and specific majors and minors. This article reviews the attempt to embed civic engagement and civic education about the national debt and budget deficit issues in a university core curriculum course at Stephen F. Austin State University. We focus on specific issues of curriculum instruction and assessment of student learning of knowledge regarding the debt and deficit issues.

Developing Leadership Skills and a Commitment to Civic Engagement During an Undergraduate Community-Based Service Learning Class

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 317-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim C. Graber ◽  
Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko ◽  
Jamie A. O’Connor ◽  
Jenny M. Linker
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Leadership Skills ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Institutions Of Higher Education ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Carnegie Classifications ◽  
Community Data

Civic engagement and service learning opportunities provide students with unique real-world experiences they are unable to acquire in a traditional in-class setting. Students develop a commitment to the community in which they live, exposure to other populations, leadership abilities, skills to work successfully within a team, and a chance to learn from failure. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has recognized the importance of such opportunities and has added the Community Engagement Classification to the restructured Carnegie Classifications of Institutions of Higher Education. The purpose of this paper is to provide a synthesis of the literature that addresses civic engagement and service learning opportunities and to describe a university class that was designed to provide undergraduate students with a capstone service learning experience promoting wellness for older adults in the community. Data that were collected to evaluate the success of the class are also described.

A Spirit of Reciprocity: Service-Learning Opportunities at Iowa

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (7) ◽  
pp. 24-29
Author(s):  
Ruth Bentler ◽  
Ann Fennell
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Graduate Student ◽  
International Collaboration ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Personal Resources ◽  
University Of Iowa ◽  
Spare Time ◽  
The University

For a number of years, faculty and students from the University of Iowa have been providing services to orphans in China. To improve sustainability, the effort was increased to also include training to hospital and orphanage staff as well. It became clear that the scope of our tasks and the amount of preparation for the students involved was exceeding what we could fit into the spare time of the typical graduate student and the mentor-of the-year. With the onset of a second humanitarian project—demanding similar training preparation and planning—a course was developed to better prepare the students for both the upcoming trips, as well as a lifetime of international collaboration and reciprocity. Funded entirely by student/faculty fundraising efforts (and personal resources), our commitment to global teaching and service is a strong one.

scholarly journals Civic Professionalism: Using Service Learning to Educate Social Work Students as Citizens

10.18060/1315 ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracey Kathleen Burke
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Civic Education ◽  
Social Work Students ◽  
Community Partnership ◽  
Civic Learning ◽  
Work Education ◽  
The University ◽  
Civic Professionalism ◽  
Schools Of Social Work

Schools of social work have put considerable energy into civic engagement and community partnership. Despite the attention paid to the civic mission of the university and/or of the profession, however, very little attention has been paid to the civic education of social work students. It will be argued here that social work education must include discussions about citizenship and democracy, about participating in our communities apart from our work. Service learning, with its emphasis on civic learning and a complementary focus on social justice, provides both a lens and a pedagogy for accomplishing this.

scholarly journals Formal Service Learning Opportunities: Engineering Internships in Social Entrepreneurship Organizations

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-52
Author(s):  
Camilla M. Saviz ◽  
Abel A. Fernandez ◽  
Elizabeth A. Basha
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Social Entrepreneurship ◽  
The United States ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Strategic Partnerships ◽  
Problem Solving Skills ◽  
Formal Service ◽  
Entrepreneurial Organization ◽  
The University

Over the past three years, a collaboration between the School of Engineering  and the ABC Center for DEF at the University of the XYZ has provided students with internship opportunities at five different social entrepreneurship organizations distributed among six countries.  The summer internship program administered by the ABC Center seeks to provide an enriching experience for participants, to raise awareness of the broad application of social entrepreneurship across different disciplines, and provide qualified student assistance to organizations seeking specific help.  Working with the socially entrepreneurial organization, students were required to apply problem-solving skills in environments where language, culture, technical support, and supervision were very different from levels experienced during their more ‘traditional’ internships in the United States. These internships in social entrepreneurship allowed students to learn first-hand that successfully implementing projects in other countries requires strong technical skills and a fundamental understanding of local cultural, political, and contextual factors.  At the institutional level, lessons learned included the importance of forming strategic partnerships to increase opportunities and capitalize on limited resources, and the need to use existing frameworks to facilitate student involvement in such service-learning opportunities.

scholarly journals A New Method of Assessing the Effects of a Service-Learning Class on Engineering Undergraduate Students

2014 ◽  
pp. 29-47
Author(s):  
Patricia Maloney ◽  
Lauren Dent ◽  
Tanja Karp
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Student Perceptions ◽  
Communication Skills ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Time Management ◽  
Interpersonal Skills ◽  
State University ◽  
Post Test ◽  
Assessment Of Student Learning ◽  
Growth Assessment

Increases in engineering service learning courses and enrolled undergraduates necessitate further research and recommendations concerning the assessment of student learning and growth. Assessment of such growth may be difficult in service learning courses because of the types of skills it fosters: interpersonal skills, critical thinking, and other professional skills not easily tested for in a classroom. Some previous attempts at assessment were predominantly standards-based and designed to measure what researchers thought students should gain from the course, rather than being based in what students thought. In this paper, we first ask students what skills they learned in service learning, determine their thoughts about the usefulness of different kinds of assessment, and then use their words to construct a naturalistic assessment that can serve as a pre- and post-test to measure growth in engineering service learning courses. The data come from 96 students and three semesters of a service learning section of a large Introduction to Engineering course at a large state university. Overall, we conclude that students perceive that they have grown at statistically significant levels in communication skills, teamwork, leadership, time management, and other engineering skills noted below. We argue that student perceptions of growth matter for their persistence in engineering and resilience after professional or academic setbacks.

scholarly journals Self-Efficacy and Civic Engagement in Undergraduate Students: Empirical Results of a Service Learning Program in Thailand

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prasart Nuangchalerm
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
General Education ◽  
Community Service ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Civic Education ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Learning Program ◽  
First Semester

The environmental and cultural problems in Thailand are large and widely distributed. To address these problems, public awareness must be raised and all sectors of society must assume their civic responsibilities to assist in sustaining both our environment and the local culture. This study sought to engage undergraduate students in civic engagement projects in order to enhance their self-efficacy to address such problems through service learning experiences. One hundred and ninety six undergraduate students participated in a general education course on civic education during the first semester of 2012. This course provided students the opportunity to explore theoretical aspects of citizenship as well as the opportunity to practice community service. Such community service allows the students to experience and learn how the community members live. Data was collected by a variety of methods; self-efficacy questionnaires, student reports, journal writing and reflections, and interviews. Findings revealed that the students had high levels of self-efficacy and increased their levels of civic engagement through the community service conducted.

scholarly journals Developing Civic Engagement in Distance Higher Education: A Case Study of Virtual Service-Learning (vSL) Programme in Spain

Open Praxis ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan García-Gutierrez ◽  
Marta Ruiz-Corbella ◽  
Araceli Del Pozo Armentia
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Practical Aspect ◽  
Digital Competence ◽  
Ethical Competence ◽  
Educación A Distancia ◽  
Practical Development ◽  
The University

Higher Education is demanding the need of a greater connection between its academic offer and the necessary civic engagement of the graduates. This has given Spain the opportunity, for just over a decade, to develop the methodology of service-learning, which combines both the theoretical and practical aspect of university learning with the practical development of solidarity and civic commitment of the students. At the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED, Spain) we have designed an online service-learning proposal, based on the virtual exchange which occurs between the students from the UNED and the University of Porto-Novo (Benin), requiring practical classes of Spanish. The result favours continuing with this virtual service-learning project aimed at the exchange with other universities; strengthening the planning of the training proposal for the development of ethical competence and civic engagement; the design of solidarity service action that enhances global citizenship and intercultural dialogue, consolidates digital competence, etc., all in a virtual educational environment.

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