First-Year Engineering Student Reflections on Service Learning: The EWB Australia Challenge

Author(s):  
Amanda Singer ◽  
Michelle Jarvie-Eggart ◽  
Judith Perlinger
Author(s):  
Lauren Dent ◽  
Patricia Maloney ◽  
Tanja Karp

Service-learning presents exciting new ways for students to enhance their learning.  Educators and scholars agree that service-learning is connected to self-efficacy, which affects student performance.  This research tests the development of self-efficacy in students enrolled in service-learning and traditional sections of a first-year engineering course. Using a previously developed metric, the Engineering Skills Assessment (ESA), students enrolled in service-learning (SL) and “traditional” (non-SL) sections quantified self-efficacy on 11 skills previously deemed important for engineering.  Student responses were compared between SL and non-SL students at the beginning and end of the semester.  Analysis of the collected data using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) grouped self-efficacy ratings for the 11 skills into three meaningful constructs: (1) Job-related skills (2) Interpersonal skills and (3) Life skills.  Mean self-efficacy scores were significantly better at the end of the course for non-SL students in all areas and for SL students in four of the 11 skills and two of the three constructs.  Self-efficacy growth was significantly higher for non-SL students, which may be due to the Dunning-Kruger effect.  However, similar percentages of both populations self-reported that their skills were improved at the end of the semester due to the class.  This research also supports the use of the ESA as a reliable psychometric tool to evaluate student self-efficacy and its relationship to service-learning.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farzana Ansari ◽  
Jennifer Wang ◽  
Ryan Shelby ◽  
Eli Patten ◽  
Lisa Pruitt

Author(s):  
Jean-Philippe Faletta ◽  
Jo A. Meier ◽  
J. Ulyses Balderas

This chapter explores how combining carefully selected high-impact educational practices in the critical first-year of college can benefit students, particularly traditionally underserved student populations, and promote cultural sensitivity and communication with a wider campus audience than is typically available to the traditional college freshmen. The First Year Experience Study Abroad (FYESA) program combines three high-impact educational experiences; freshman seminar, service-learning, and global learning, in one innovative program targeting freshman students in their second semester. The purpose of the program is to provide students with an extension of the Freshman Seminar through their entire first-year, coupled with strategies for increasing diversity awareness and sensitivity in the classroom and abroad by engaging in experiential learning in the form of service-learning. As part of the program, freshman students will plan a service-learning project in the host country over the spring semester and then deliver the project during the travel abroad portion of the course.


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