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Thriving in Academe

Successful Service Learning

Service learning offers students a guided tour of the real world.
By Rona J. Karasik, St. Cloud State University

Faculty members in virtually any discipline can enrich the learning experience of their students by helping them learn by doing.

Although service learning is not new—the concept of learning by doing while providing service to the community has been around since at least the 1960s—this unique form of experiential education has recently become something of a trend in colleges and universities.

If you believe the rumors and the stories going around our campuses, administrators are in full support of service learning, and the outcomes are great.

The truth is not so dramatic. Some instructors are using service learning, some administrations are supporting it, and when it's done right, the benefits are, indeed, great.

The question is how to make service learning accessible and successful on a broader scale.

The answer comes in four parts:

• Clarify what service learning is—and what it isn't.
• Identify goals for service learning and ways to achieve those goals.
• Find resources and the best ways to access them.
• Examine current practices and learn not only about the successes but about the challenges as well.

Service learning is a form of learning by doing, but we might profitably use the opposite approach as well. This might be called learning by not doing (not making the mistakes that others have made, that is).

Meet Rona J. Karasik
Rona J. Karasik, Ph.D.is the director of the gerontology program and a professor of community studies at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota. She regularly teaches courses in aging, dementia, housing for older adults, and democratic citizenship. Her research interests are varied and focus on service learning, housing and older adults, and issues of families and aging. She has been working with students and community groups to develop and implement service learning projects since 1993. She has presented her work on service learning at various local, regional, and national forums, and has authored several articles on the subject. She can be reached ar rjkarasik@stcloudestate.edu.

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