Keeping students engaged in experiential education: The importance of service and community-based learning

Plato’s maxim that “necessity is the mother of invention” was put to the test with COVID-19. While every aspect of higher education was impacted and required creativity and flexibility, experiential education (EE) components of education presented unique challenges, and the solutions to keep those activities going have continued relevance moving forward. As COVID-based restrictions begin to lift we must strive to infuse service and community-based learning offerings back into the curriculum when we can, and when not feasible, we should consider offering alternatives that can take students beyond traditional classroom learning.

The foundation for successful service and community-based learning opportunities is that all stakeholders (the agency, the students, and the educational institution) benefit. The ability to offer alternate methods (and additional people power in terms of student participation) for delivering needed services may be the lynchpin for such activities moving forward in extraordinary circumstances. Moving beyond reactive changes due to a current issue such as the pandemic, however, creative solutions for EE can broaden the reach of the opportunities both for the students and the community organizations. Can local school children be mentored over Zoom? Can students engage in advocacy work on behalf of a food pantry? Can agencies provide data to evaluate program effectiveness? While not an exhaustive list, the above examples invite further learning about cognitive, developmental, multicultural, and statistical content, respectively, and indicate just how varied the opportunities to get students to interact with the community truly are. Often the hardest part of service and community-based learning is in creating the initial opportunities to get students out of the classroom; intentional partnering is essential to any service or community-based learning. Start by identifying your strongest existing community partners and vital services. Once you have identified these, reach out to them and actively offer your assistance in planning how to get or keep students in the mix. Regardless of whether your target organizations are well funded and staffed or operate on shoestring budgets with few paid staff, they all may reasonably be unable to place service and community-based learning opportunities at the top of their priority list, even in the best of times. If your teaching schedule is lighter in the summer months, consider using that time to proactively reach out and assist agencies in this brainstorming process; considering how to tackle issues from a new lens can lead to exciting new opportunities to deliver EE, and your students will benefit from the effort.

One exciting possibility from the pandemic-related growth in the use of technology in all aspects of education is that perhaps more clearly than ever before, we recognize how we can step beyond both our standard way of doing things and our local options to find meaningful learning opportunities for students. Although the “town and gown” partnering relationships between academia and the community are often localized, thanks to the greater familiarity with the applications of technology, the reach of EE has expanded. Consider your existing curriculum and its EE components to identify potential gaps in meaningful EE opportunities. If no local agencies can viably partner with you to provide an EE opportunity, expand your search to more physically distant agencies that are interested in partnering remotely.

Despite your best efforts, there may still be agencies and activities that will be disrupted for some time as they continue to deal with how the pandemic has impacted their organization. More broadly, the ability of a specific agency to partner with you in service or community-based learning capacities may wax and wane based on any number of reasons including staffing, current initiatives, etc. When this is the case, consider how to deliver an alternative educational opportunity that attempts to approximate at least some portion of the service or community-based learning activity outcome. If, for example, your class requires interactions with the mental health community to reduce the stigma of psychological disorders, consider offering various simulations that may help students to gain perspective on certain symptoms of psychological disorders. Although this type of assignment is likely not as profound as the learning that takes place in service and community-based learning, it can provide some perspective on the learning material.

COVID-19 presented faculty with a chance to reexamine their pedagogical practices, including those related to service and community-based learning. Careful consideration of desired learning outcomes and offering your assistance to agencies both near and far to consider how to partner with them to deliver targeted services are all excellent ways to create new relationships and strengthen existing connections with agencies to ensure ongoing service and community-based learning opportunities for the future. Because full-fledged service and community-based learning opportunities may not always be available, create alternate exercises that address the learning outcomes as a back-up plan.

Carla G. Strassle is a professor of psychology and the director of experiential learning, internships, and practica in the school of behavioral sciences and education at York College of Pennsylvania. With experiential learning oversight for criminal justice, human services, psychology, recreation and leadership, and sociology majors, she works closely with faculty members from various disciplines and community agencies. She is a clinical psychologist by training and routinely incorporates various high impact practices including service and community-based learning into her courses. COVID-19 presented her with the opportunity to think intentionally about the purpose that service-learning plays in her courses and how to present that learning in different ways in extraordinary times. Her research focuses on critical thinking and stigma reduction.