Guest Blogger Series: Authentic Learning Through Service Learning - Dr. Courtney Meyers, Texas Tech

Courtney Meyers is an associate professor in agricultural communications at Texas Tech University. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Web design, public relations writing, and online media. She also serves as an academic adviser, co-adviser for Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow, and teaches a section of Texas Tech’s first-year seminar course. Dr. Meyers has been recognized for her teaching excellence at both the university and national level including the 2015 USDA New Teacher Award. She earned a B.S. from Kansas State University, M.S. from the University of Arkansas and Ph.D. from the University of Florida.

“When am I ever going to need to know this?” was a question I often asked myself while sitting in my college algebra class. I know many college students also ask themselves this question. As a college professor, one of my goals is to help students visualize how the concepts and theories they learn in the classroom are relevant to their future careers. One of the most effective ways I’ve found to do this is service learning.

Service Learning Overview

Service learning connects what students are learning in the classroom (the academic content) to experiences with community partners. Through this active engagement, students and community partners cooperate to address felt needs in a mutually-beneficial relationship.

Service learning should not to be confused with community service, internships, field experience, or volunteering. In service learning, the students are within the supportive environment of a classroom while applying skills and concepts in authentic situations.

Another trademark of service learning is reflection. Students need opportunities to consider how what they are learning is the same as or different than what they have encountered in their work with a community partner. Active reflection is not typically something we engage in without some encouragement, but this process helps us make sense of prior events, draw connections, and gain a deeper understanding.

My Experience with Service Learning

Media kits students in Communicating Agriculture
to the Public developed for their community partners.

I use service learning in my writing-intensive “Communicating Agriculture to the Public” course because it grounds the course material in actual experiences while providing a valuable service for community partners. It is sincerely the best way to meet my course’s learning objectives and invigorates me as a teacher.

In the past five years, more than 150 students have developed communication materials for appreciative community partners. The feedback I received from students and clients indicates both enjoy this experience.

Benefits of Service Learning

Students in service learning courses are able to gain first-hand experience with real-world situations and problems, which engages them in higher order thinking skills such as problem solving and critical thinking. Rather than simply understanding a concept, service learning challenges them to synthesize and apply their knowledge to create a product or evaluate the situation and provide suggestions.

Service learning requires students to become more actively engaged in their own learning. Students are not just completing the assignments as busy work; the result of their efforts is something others need. Due to this real-world application and reciprocal relationship, this pedagogy increases civic awareness and encourages students to become more active citizens and community members.

Finally, another reason to use service learning is that it creates a more engaging classroom environment. Honestly, I don’t want to read up to 30 slightly different papers written about the same topics all semester. Service learning forces students to apply the academic content in specific ways unique to each community partner.

Challenges of Service Learning

Despite all the positive aspects of using service learning, it does present some challenges for successful implementation. It can be time consuming to coordinate with a community partner or facilitate students’ interactions with community partners.

Service learning also requires the instructor to give up some control over the class – this can be intimidating. You must be willing to make adjustments and be flexible as unexpected situations arise. I learn something new every semester to help me be better prepared for the next.

This pedagogy does opens our classroom to criticism (constructive or otherwise), which can be intimidating. We must be receptive to that input and recognize that those who are in the “real-world” have a great deal to contribute to improving our curriculum.

Using Service Learning

If you are thinking about implementing this active learning pedagogy, here are some questions to ask yourself:

• How could I incorporate service learning in an existing course or do I need to develop a new course with service learning as an integral part?
• What would I ask students to do? How does that relate to the course content?
• What do I want students to learn from the experience and how can that benefit the community partner?
• Who would be the community partner(s)? How many partners are necessary?
• How would the students reflect on their experience?
• What obstacles do I anticipate?
• What would I, as the instructor, hope to gain from this experience?

In Closing

Although I may still be pondering when I’ll use my college algebra knowledge, I hope students in my service learning class have no doubt about when they’ll need to know the skills and concepts they learned.