Course-Based Service Learning

The following is a list of the services that Community Service-Learning (CS-L) can provide to professors interested in developing a service learning-based course.

• Service-Learning Course Development and Consultation

  CS-L staff members will help you develop a course that will match learning objectives with community agency needs to increase student acquisition of subject knowledge and promote community engagement

• Support of Service-Learning Course

  CS-L will help you identify community agencies to partner with you for service-learning courses.

• Classroom Visits

  CS-L staff will come to your class during the first two weeks of the semester to place students in community service agencies. You must sign up for these visits before the semester begins. You can use our classroom visit request form to sign up online.

• Record of Service Form

  You can use this form to submit a record of all the hours your students have volunteered as a part of your class at the end of the semester .

• Traditional Classroom Placements

  This is the most frequent type of student placement, matching each student with individual agencies. For this service, CS-L comes to your classroom to facilitate a service learning overview and coordinates service placements with your students in one of over 75 local agencies CS-L partners with. CS-L Service Coordinators and Professional staff walk faculty through the step-by-step process of placing students in the community as part of the classroom requirements. CS-L has developed strong partnerships with faculty and community agencies to offer supportive and productive experiential opportunities for students, and much needed assistance for the non-profit sector.

• Customized Classroom Placements

  This approach more intentionally focuses the service learning course objectives with the needs and services of select community agencies. This approach places groups of students from your class in selected agencies. Students and agencies report greater mutual benefits and learning by this more customized approach. This customized approach is also more environmentally conscious as students are better able to carpool to agency sites. Because of the additional time required to create these customized placements, faculty must contact CS-L at least one semester in advance to create this placement option. Only in rare instances are customized placements done in the same semester with new faculty (regardless of their prior service-learning experience) or returning faculty that has not used the customized approach before.

• Reflection Services

  The heart of Service Learning is reflection. We now offer standardized reflection training to our service coordinators, Alternative Break leaders, and faculty. Our office will meet with faculty by appointment for reflection training and also provide you with the resources needed to improve your reflection skills.

• May Faculty Workshop

  This training held each year is an excellent opportunity for new faculty to learn from seasoned Service Learning academics ways to embed and enhance course development through service.

For any of the above services, please contact Walt Ghant by email at: ghantwa@jmu.edu or by phone at: (540) 568-7336.