Best Practices in Community Engaged Teaching

By Joe Bandy, Assistant Director, CFT

• Academic Content
• Service Placement
• Student Reflection
• Feedback

Jeffrey Howard has offered ten principles of that may serve as valuable guidelines for planning high impact community engaged courses and projects, which are excerpted here by the University of Minnesota’s Community Service-Learning Center. [9]

In addition to these principles, the scholarship on community engaged teaching suggests other important considerations for faculty.  These are derived from various sources:[10]

Academic Content

Project-Content Links.  The thorough integration of project and academic content is associated with the greatest synergy of community engagement and learning experiences.  This means that learning goals and community engagement goals should be closely aligned.  Content should inform students about various dimensions of their community project and, likewise, community engagement should allow opportunities to learn course content at deeper levels.  Without this integration, student learning and community impact can be limited.

Community Partnership

Engagement.  Fundamentally, community service projects should take place in ways that allow students to have significant community impact.  This means that the service component should meet a public good as determined by an open and thoughtful collaboration between faculty and community partners.

Reciprocity.  Reciprocity means that everyone involved in a project – student, faculty, community members – act as both teacher and learner, and that everyone regards one another as equal colleagues.[11] This ensures good communications and planning throughout the project, maximizes active learning, ensures mutual impact, and empowers community voice.

Community Voice.  Community voice in a community-based project has an impact on student cultural understanding, and can shape their experiential and ethical learning.[12] For this learning to occur, community members should be involved in every stage of the project and course, when possible.  It is important to encourage and support community involvement in project planning, student orientation, guest lectures, site visits, class discussions, progress reports, final presentations, and project evaluation.  Not only does this permit greater cultural understanding and ethical development, but it ensures deeper community partnerships and more impactful projects.

Exposure to Diversity.  Exposure to diversity has an impact on students, particularly personal outcomes, such as identity development and cultural understanding.  Again, community involvement is important at every phase of a project to make certain that this learning can take place.

Public Dissemination.  To guarantee community engagement and impact, the results of the project should be shared with the partner, if not with a larger public such as the campus and public communities

Reflection

Without opportunities for students to reflect upon their community work in the context of course content, the learning potential of community projects is limited.  There should be some mechanism that encourages students to link their community experience to course content and to reflect upon why the community work is important. Below are some reflection exercises or assignments that are particularly helpful in community based projects:[13]

Personal Journals provide a way for students to express thoughts and feelings about the community experience throughout the semester. Structured journals provide guidance so that students link personal learning with course content. Click on each journal type to learn more.

Directed writings ask students to consider the community experience within the framework of course content. The instructor identifies a section from the text book or class readings (e.g., quotes, statistics, key concepts) and structures a question for students to answer in 1-2 pages. A list of directed writings can be provided at the beginning of the semester.

Experiential research papers ask students to identify an underlying social issue they have encountered at the community site. Students then research the social issue. Based on their experience and library research, students make recommendations to the agency for future action. Class presentations of the experiential research paper can culminate semester work.

Online discussion is a way to facilitate reflection with the instructor and peers involved in community projects. Students can write weekly summaries and identify critical incidents that occurred at the community site. Instructors can post questions for consideration and topics for directed writings. A log of the e-mail discussions can be printed as data to the group about the learning that occurred from the community experience.

Ethical case studies give students the opportunity to analyze a situation and gain practice in ethical decision making as they choose a course of action. Students write up a case study of an ethical dilemma they have confronted at the community site, including a description of the context, the individuals involved, and the controversy or event that created the ethical dilemma. Case studies are read in class; students discuss the situation and possible responses.

Community engagement portfolios contain evidence of both processes and products completed and ask students to assess their work in terms of the learning objectives of the course. Portfolios might contain any of the following: community engagement contract, weekly log, personal journal, impact statement, directed writings, photo essay, products completed during the community experience (e.g., agency brochure, lesson plans, advocacy letters). Students write an evaluation essay providing a self-assessment of how effectively they met the learning and community objectives of the course.

Personal narratives are based on journal entries written regularly during the semester. Students create a fictional story about themselves as a learner in the course. This activity sets a context for reflection throughout the semester with attention directed to a finished product that is creative in nature. Personal narratives give students an opportunity to describe their growth as a learner.

Exit cards are brief note card reflections turned in at the end of each class period. Students are asked to reflect on disciplinary content from class discussion and explain how this information relates to their community involvement. Exit cards can be read by instructors in order to gain a better understanding of student experiences. Instructors may want to summarize key points and communicate these back to students during the next class.

Class presentations might be three-minute updates that occur each month, or thirty minute updates during the final two class periods during which students present their final analysis of the community activities and offer recommendations to the agency for additional programming. Agency personnel can be invited to hear final presentations.

Weekly log is a simple listing of the activities completed each week at the community site. This is a way to monitor work and provide students with an overview of the contribution they have made during the semester.

Feedback

Receiving quality feedback from professors or community partners has an impact on students’ self reported learning, use of course skills, and commitment to community engagement.

Formative Evaluation: Assessment of student progress towards the learning and community goals are crucial for project completion and quality learning.  It also can help the faculty or community partner address any problems that might arise mid-semester before they negatively impact projects.  This can be done through regular if short progress reports that are structured into the writing for the course.

Summative Evaluation:  End of course evaluations help ensure the success of the next community project as a learning and community building experience.  How successful was the project for the agency, the people who use the agency, and the students These types of questions typically are not a part of end-of-semester student evaluations and therefore should be the subject of anonymous surveys and class discussions organized by faculty.  Likewise, community partner project evaluations can help to improve partnerships and project designs in the future, and improve campus-community relations.

Other CFT Guides About Community Engaged Teaching

• What is Service Learning or Community Engagement?
• A Word on Nomenclature
• Community Engaged Teaching Step by Step
• Challenges and Opportunities of Community Engaged Teaching
• Additional Resources