Sustainable tourism pedagogy and academic-community collaboration: A progressive service-learning approach

Purpose This study aims to share experiences of an easy to adapt service-learning approach in a graduate course on life cycle assessment (LCA). Specifically, it reports on how students helped the university’s cafeteria to assess meals by conducting an LCA for 25 meals and identifying environmental hotspots. Design/methodology/approach A descriptive case study of a graduate course at Ulm University is presented. The course included lectures and problem-based exercises, both theoretical and software assisted. A course evaluation was conducted during the course and one year after completion to poll improvement potentials, as well as its impacts on students’ everyday life. Findings It was found that although it was the first LCA for all students, the resulting LCA information of 25 different meals were homogeneous, comparable to the scientific literature and beneficial to the cafeteria’s sustainable development strategy. The concept of service-learning had a higher impact on students’ motivation than a good grade and active-learning is explicitly requested by students. The course design sensitized students to the real-life problems of LCA and made their consumption patterns more elaborate and ecological. Furthermore, this digitization of higher education could be carried out with only minor changes in the present COVID-19 pandemic situation. Originality/value As the subject of service-learning in natural sciences is still expandable, this study presents an easy to adapt case study on how to integrate such an approach into university curricula dominated by traditional learning. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this case study presents the first published LCA university course explicitly describing and evaluating a service-learning approach. The topic touches the everyday lives of students, allows comparisons between different student groups, is easily scalable to different group sizes and credits, and supports learning both how to study in small groups and cooperation between groups to ensure comparability of LCA results.

Download Full-text

Developing Interpersonal Skills of Evaluators: A Service-Learning Approach

American Journal of Evaluation ◽

10.1177/1098214019886064 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 41 (3) ◽

pp. 432-451

Author(s):

Lora H. Warner

Keyword(s):

Service Learning ◽

Interpersonal Skills ◽

Interpersonal Competence ◽

Learning Approach ◽

Technical Knowledge ◽

Community Based ◽

Self Confidence ◽

Professional Self ◽

Group Student ◽

Insight Into

The challenge and opportunity for the field of evaluation is to prepare evaluators with sophisticated interpersonal competence alongside technical research skills. This article shows that service-learning, a “real-world” pedagogical model, holds promise as a way to educate students in evaluation while developing their interpersonal skills. While other community-based approaches offer experiential applications of evaluation methods, service-learning adds the important element of reflection to deepen student learning. A course that employed the “client-based” service-learning approach, individual-to-group student assignments, practice with interpersonal skills, and ongoing reflection activities is presented as a pedagogical approach to expand the range of interpersonal skills that can be developed among students. Student surveys showed that the course conveyed many benefits beyond technical knowledge of evaluation: use and awareness of important interpersonal skills, growing insight into their community and its people, growth of professional self-confidence, and kindling an interest in the field of evaluation.

Download Full-text

Teaching the principles of biotechnology transfer: A service-learning approach

Electronic Journal of Biotechnology ◽

10.2225/vol6-issue1-fulltext-i04pdf ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Beronda L. Montgomery

Keyword(s):

Service Learning ◽

Learning Approach

Download Full-text

The Value of Service-Learning in L2 Teacher Preparation

Handbook of Research on Service-Learning Initiatives in Teacher Education Programs - Advances in Educational Marketing, Administration, and Leadership ◽

10.4018/978-1-5225-4041-0.ch006 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 103-124 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Kristen M. Lindahl ◽

Zuzana Tomas ◽

Raichle Farrelly ◽

Anna Krulatz

Keyword(s):

Teacher Education ◽

Second Language ◽

Teacher Preparation ◽

Student Engagement ◽

Service Learning ◽

Teaching Profession ◽

Teacher Education Programs ◽

Community Collaboration ◽

Education Programs ◽

Course Content

Service-learning (SL) constitutes a particularly effective vehicle for engaging pre-service teachers with ELs during their university-level coursework, mostly due to the nature of SL that addresses the potential cultural and linguistic mismatch between teachers and learners in today's school systems by encouraging future educators to engage with the communities of their students long before they enter the teaching profession. This chapter describes four cases that demonstrate how second language (L2) teacher education programs utilize service-learning (SL) to engage pre-service teachers in diverse cultural and linguistic contexts through the lens of pedagogy of particularity. Each case presents four consistent key principles of service-learning: course content, community collaboration, integrated assignments that guide student engagement, and reflective practices that culminate the SL experience.

Download Full-text