Director, Community Engaged Learning and Research Saint Mary's College of California Saint Mary's College of California Moraga, California, United States
Abstract: This Lightning Talk will highlight an innovative community engagement (CE) course that was designed during the COVID-19 pandemic. With faculty guidance and critical reflection, this online retrospective CE course was just as meaningful and beneficial to student learning as a traditional CE course. At Saint Mary’s College of California, all undergraduates are required to take a CE course to fulfill a core graduation requirement, but fewer courses were offered during the pandemic. With the shortage of CE courses and a large number of graduating seniors still needing the requirement, I created a course titled “Community Engagement: A Retrospective Learning Experience.” This course was designed for students who had already completed significant work/service/praxis that was directly related to coursework and occurred while students were in college, but did not receive CE credit. Students actively and critically reflected upon their past service experiences and integrated them in their academic understanding of the world to fulfill the CE requirement. Using the theoretical concepts of Service-Learning and Critical Pedagogy, I explored the questions, “Can a retrospective community engagement course be just as meaningful to student learning as a traditional community engagement course?” and “How do students make meaning of past service experiences?” As an online course, it provided flexibility for students with families, working students, and student athletes to fulfill their CE graduation requirement in a format and time that was convenient for them. This talk is intended for practitioner-scholars and faculty who might want to replicate this course on their campuses.
Narrative: This Lightning Talk will highlight an innovative community engagement (CE) course that was designed during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to sharing my online classroom CE experience, I will share the results of my qualitative study using student reflection papers to see how students made meaning of their past CE experiences and explored new ways of engagement.
All Saint Mary’s College of California undergraduates need to take a CE course to fulfill a core graduation requirement. We offer approximately 50 CE courses annually, with about five courses available in January Term, which is when many graduating seniors, athletes, student parents, and STEM majors take CE courses. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, fewer CE courses were offered in January 2021, because community partners were not available or did not have the capacity for one month of remote service. With the shortage of January Term CE courses and a large number of graduating seniors still needing the CE requirement, I created a course titled “Community Engagement: A Retrospective Learning Experience.” This course was intended for students who had already completed significant work/service/praxis that was directly related to coursework and occurred while students were in college, but did not receive CE credit. They basically fulfilled two of the three CE learning objectives (coursework, service) and were missing the third objective (reflection) for the College requirement.
Using the theoretical concepts of Service-Learning (Battistoni, 2012; Bowen, 2014; Bringle & Hatcher, 2000) and Critical Pedagogy (Ash & Clayton, 2009; Mitchell, 2013; Rendón, 2012; Yosso, 2006), I explored the questions, “Can a retrospective community engagement course be just as meaningful to student learning as a traditional community engagement course?” and “How do students make meaning of past service experiences?”
This course was unique because students reflected on past service experiences months, if not years, after they happened. Students read CE texts (The Student Companion to Community-Engaged Learning by Donahue and Plaxton-Moore (2018), and a handful of other CE articles), reflected on engagement experiences and moments of transformational learning, and related them to Saint Mary’s courses as identified by the students. For example, there were students who served at hospitals, tutoring centers, and nonprofit organizations and related those service experiences to biology, math, and business classes, respectively. The course was offered on Zoom and was a highly interactive lecture/discussion course with Jamboard activities, breakout groups, and reflection papers for students to fully integrate their service work, academics, and class content just like other CE courses. Students critically reflected on their values and assumptions about their service experiences, the communities they served, and the systemic issues of oppression that impacted their communities and their roles in it. They explored issues such as asset-based vs. deficit-based mindset, racism and antiracism in service, and notions of charity vs. solidarity.
This course has been so successful, and continues to meet the need of helping students fulfill the CE graduation requirement, that it has been offered three additional terms (summer 2021, spring 2022, and spring 2023), and is scheduled to be offered in fall 2023 and spring 2024. As an evening online course, it has provided flexibility for students with families, working students, and student athletes to fulfill their CE graduation requirement in a format and time that was convenient for them.
I would like to share my CE retrospective course experience with other practitioner-scholars and faculty so they can replicate this course on their own campuses to provide more innovative and inclusive CE experiences for their students.
