On 21 November 2024, Andrew Furco talked about considerations and strategies for assessing the impacts of service-learning at UCSIA.
Service-learning is an educational approach that combines academic learning with meaningful community service, allowing students to apply their knowledge while addressing real-world challenges.
Measuring the impact of service-learning can be elusive because it can serve many different purposes and achieve a variety of goals. In addition, service-learning projects highly depends on the context. Therefore it is not always appropriate to use prefabricated instruments to assess the impacts of particular service-learning activities.
In this session, expert Andrew Furco (University of Minnesota) explored the different ways to assess the various impacts of service-learning on students, teachers, and the community. He will review different tools for measuring service-learning impacts as well as discuss key considerations for developing an effective assessment strategy.
The questions addressed:
- How does one measure the impact of service-learning?
- What are possible indicators to measure service-learning impact?
- At what level should we measure impact (e.g., student level, course level, curriculum level)?
- What are/can be the roles of teachers and community partners in measuring impact?
- If service-learning quality matters, what are the minimum criteria for high-quality service-learning to ensure positive outcomes and high impact?
- How does one measure the impact of service-learning?
The event was hosted by:
- the Flemish Network for Service-Learning in Higher Education: www.servicelearningvlaanderen.be
- and UCSIA: www.ucsia.org
In the context of the research workshop on service-learning
