Service Learning: Incorporating Relevance, Purpose and Learning

Service learning is a common pedagogical approach to engage students in relevant, purpose-driven activities. Although there is a wealth of literature on service learning across content areas, including the sciences, this strategy may still be resisted in content-intensive areas where many instructors continue to emphasize content over unifying concepts. This session will provide evidence for successful development and implementation of service learning approaches for undergraduate and graduate science students that enhanced learning and professional skill acquisition. Wider impacts of the implementations will also be presented. A discussion will follow about faculty attitudes toward service learning, ways to successfully employ service learning in content-intensive courses, learning outcomes that are served by this pedagogy, and stumbling blocks to course inclusion. The session will be facilitated by a panel with varying areas of expertise in service learning, including university faculty members, a university facilitator and an outside service-learning partner.