Students as Community Vaccinators: Implementation of a Service-Learning COVID-19 Vaccination Program

Background: Service-learning is an integral component of medical education. While the COVID-19 pandemic has caused massive educational disruptions, it has also catalyzed innovation in service-learning as real-time responses to pandemic-related problems. For example, the limited number of qualified providers was a potential barrier to local and national SARS-CoV-2 vaccination efforts. Foreseeing this hurdle, New York State temporarily allowed healthcare professional trainees to vaccinate, enabling medical students to support an overwhelmed healthcare system and contribute to the community. Yet, it was the responsibility of medical schools to interpret these rules and implement the vaccination programs. Here the authors describe a service-learning vaccination program directed towards underserved communities. Methods: Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) rapidly developed a faculty-led curriculum to prepare students to communicate with patients about the COVID-19 vaccines and to administer intramuscular injections. Qualified students were deployed to public vaccination clinics located in underserved neighborhoods across New York City in collaboration with an established community partner. The educational value of the program was evaluated with retrospective survey. Results: Throughout the program, which lasted from February to June 2021, 128 WCM students worked at 103 local events, helping to administer 26,889 vaccine doses. Analysis of student evaluations revealed this program taught fundamental clinical skills, increasing comfort giving intramuscular injection from 2% to 100% and increasing comfort talking to patients about the COVID-19 vaccine from 30% to 100%. Qualitatively participants described the program as a transformative service-learning experience. Conclusion: As new virus variants emerge, nations battle recurrent waves of infection, and vaccine eligibility expands to include children and boosters, the need for effective vaccination plans continues to grow. The program described here offers a novel framework that academic medical centers could adapt to increase vaccine access in their local community and provide students with a uniquely meaningful educational experience.

Initiatives and Responses to Migrant Workers during the Lockdown

This narrative describes an initiative of the National Service Scheme team at Andhra Loyola Institute of Engineering and Technology. It highlights initiatives to address the situation of migrant workers during the pandemic lockdown in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh in India. In the Krishna District of Andhra Pradesh, migrant laborers were forced to walk home, sometimes hundreds, even thousands of kilometers, to reunite with their families. It was hard to ignore these images, especially those who carried the elderly on their shoulders, and small children slumped over rolling suitcases. Most used any means of transport they found, even bicycles. Some succumbed to accidents and exposure to heat. In the midst of the lockdown, the NSS team quickly came together and planned an outreach/relief camp for migrants in Krishna District. It was chosen since many villagers were migrants and the lockdown had affected in multiple ways. The relief camp took place in the month of April, a time when temperatures soar in southern India. The students and the faculty members joined hands to reach out to the Migrants in the most despairing moments. The students commented that they saw their education from a different perspective, one that integrated curriculum and good citizenship for marginalized persons. One of the ways of infusing relevance into education is to embed it within meaningful service learning. This paper is an attempt to exhibit the Initiative and Responses to the Migrant workers during the Lockdown.

Exploring the impact of student developed marketing communication tools and resources on SMEs performance and satisfaction

A number of SMEs lack the essential marketing skills, knowledge, tools and resources, and financial access to ensure the survival of their businesses. Service learning could be used as an effective pedagogy for assisting SMEs with vital marketing communication (MC) strategies via the development of tools and resources that may increase business growth and sustainability. The primary research objective was to evaluate SMEs’ satisfaction regarding performance factors, and student developed MC tools and resources that were implemented via a MC service learning programme (in the form of student-run agencies). The inquiry utilized the triad service learning model and quality assurance cycle to apply an evaluation research design that was substantiated by the expectancy-disconfirmation paradigm. A survey was conducted among 107 SME owners and managers via a structured questionnaire. The student developed MC tools and resources and their perceived usefulness resulted in a positive influence on a number of performance factors among SMEs. MC tools and resources such as a customer database, email address, and Facebook page had the largest influence on performance factors. Performance factors such as an increase in sales, new customers, brand awareness, competitive advantage, business efficiency, and motivation of employees were found to have a positive influence SME satisfaction. Further inquiry could replicate the study via various marketing-related service learning programmes in different countries that have divergent cultures, economics and contexts.

Reconnecting Youth to Nature: A Camp on Campus Model

Day camps are a powerful context for youth development. The American Camp Association and Leave No Trace have been integral in supporting youth development by identifying outcomes associated with participation in outdoor recreation. Recreation majors in the programming class used the camp as a service-learning component of the class that offered them valuable hands-on experience in program design, program facilitation, working with youth, and program evaluation. Therefore, this study evaluated the impact of camp on identified youth outcomes. The outdoor recreation camp was a partnership from a private school and local university. The Youth Outcomes Battery provided measures that focus on common outcomes (e.g., affinity for nature). Thirty-one of the 32 campers completed the retrospective questionnaire. The sample was 61% female, with an average age of 9 years. On a scale of 1 to 10, campers scored a 9.32 on Level of Enjoyment. Findings show that over 50% of the campers learned “a little” or “a lot” about the desired outcomes (e.g., affinity for nature). This work provides an example of an evidence-based nature camp.

Deployment of service-learning as a pedagogy for social transformation

Teaching is not only a traditional role of universities, but it remains one of the most critical missions of them. The pedagogy used in teaching determines if learning will be transformational or just transactional. Transactional learning has continually increased university graduates who become a problem to the community instead of being a source of solutions to the community problems. This study introduces service-learning as a transformational learning pedagogy that empowers students to identify problems in their community and enables them to work with the community as co-creators to solve the myriad challenges that the communities battle with daily. The study provides empirical evidence of how the service-learning model is used as an education pedagogy in the informal settlements of Nairobi to train slum dwellers in civic education and development. The study adopted a qualitative approach. The study's findings demonstrate that service-learning enables students to acquire knowledge and skills to deploy in their communities. It provides evidence on how service-learning can be modelled for transformative education. The study results reveal how service-learning as a teaching pedagogy can contribute to students' personal transformation and the social transformation of the community.

Transformative service-learning experience through participatory project management

Studies have shown that for Service-Learning (SL) to be truly valuable and transformative, it must employ participatory project management practices and is ideally conducted in a face-to-face setting. This case study aims to highlight the strategies used to make SL projects long-term and participatory. It also measures the effectiveness of such approach in achieving a valuable and transformative SL experience for students and partner communities. Qualitative results show that students were able to develop desired personal, professional, and civic competencies. On the part of the partner communities, qualitative results reveal that they appreciate the year-long participatory SL engagement with the students that brought about high quality SL projects. Quantitative data, on the other hand, indicate that the paired samples t-test resulted in a moderate practical significant difference in the pre-and post-test scores of students when it came to their personal, professional, and civic mindedness skills. Finally, quantitative results indicate that partner communities reported that SL projects brought them a very favorable impact in terms of skills and competencies, motivation and commitments, personal growth and self-concept, and acquisition of knowledge.

Undergraduate Nursing Students' Experience of Northern Rural and Remote Indigenous Communities

Undergraduate nursing programs are moving towards a service learning model in teaching nursing student cultural awareness. In this article, we discuss the nursing student experience in a university elective which immerses students in rural and remote Indigenous communities resulting in cultural consciousness. This service learning experience that students encountered promoted growth in nursing praxis, and fostered positive curriculum growth and community partnerships between the College and the Indigenous communities in which they visited. Students gained cultural consciousness and increased awareness, which is beneficial in their future nursing careers as they grow into better culturally competent care providers. Also discussed is the history and background of these Indigenous communities, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the First Nations Principles of OCAP (ownership, control, access and possession). These topics are discussed in detail throughout the student experience as they respond to nurses’ professional standards, development of cultural competency and integrating calls to action in truth and reconciliation.